Volkswagen hosted its 1st suppliers conference in Mumbai recently. Nearly 250 suppliers from India and abroad followed the invitation to a one-day meeting with members of the Volkswagen Group. The important objective of the conference was to present the automotive division of the Volkswagen brand as well as the recently founded national companies. “Our objective is to establish Volkswagen as a local manufacturer and a long-term business partner in India,” said the President of Volkswagen India Private Limited, Joerg Mueller. He emphasized that a significant share of the material required will come from local suppliers. The new plant in India will create some 2,500 new jobs. 

The Executive Director Procurement of Volkswagen India Private Limited, Pierre Bruedgam, explained: “We will start our sourcing activities soon to find the potential partners for Volkswagen in India with local as well as global perspectives.” The new Volkswagen plant in the Chakan Industrial Park near Pune will commence producing up to 110,000 vehicles a year as of end-2009. With investment totaling some 410 million euros, a full production plant with a press shop, body shop, paint shop and assembly lines is to be built on the 230 hectare site. All planned activities for the production plant are running to schedule. The ground is currently being prepared for build-up.

Honda Siel India has introduced the Honda Civic 1.8 V range in India. The Civic 1.8V offers offers enhanced interior styling with leather interiors in addition to features such as turn lamps on outside rear view mirror and fog lamps which complement the premium look of the car. Interior of the V range is plush with a luxurious feel. 

“Civic’s appeal has now been enhanced with additional features in the 1.8V range”, said Masahiro Takedagawa, President & CEO, Honda Siel Cars India. The 1.8V range is priced between Rs 1,151,000 and Rs1,221,000 (ex-showroom Delhi). From the launch of the Civic in July 2006 in India the company has sold nearly 20,000 units.

Hero Honda launched the new Splendor NXG recently. Claimed to be an all-new bike, the Splendor NXG comes with a new engine engine and a host of other features like powerful and stylish trapezoidal multi-reflector headlight as part of the new aggressive styling, stylish tail light, 160mm ground clearance, stylish visor, fuel tank with knee grip, sleek instrument panel with trip meter and an attractive aluminium die cast rear grip.

PTC has launched Windchill MPMLink, an integral module of Windchill 9.0, for manufacturing process management (MPM). The development of the new solution, which began with PTC’s acquisition of Polyplan in June 2005, has since then led to redeveloping the solution as a fully integral module of Windchill that is part of Windchill 9.0. PTC recently introduced Windchill 9.0—a production-proven content and process management software. Windchill MPMLink is different from other manufacturing process management solutions. It focuses on the daily core issue of managing process plans and resources without requiring complex, expensive, simulation-focused tools. 

Windchill MPMLink allows manufacturing engineers to develop manufacturing processes from the same product information that’s being defined by engineering, eliminating the problems inherent in creating and maintaining duplicate product information. By easily transforming engineering BOMs (eBOMs) into manufacturing BOMs (mBOMs) and defining and managing the manufacturing processes in the same system, companies can ensure that the product will be accurately manufactured according to design specifications. 

With an integral system, manufacturers can have a single end-to-end change management process across engineering and manufacturing. Being able to manage and optimize MPM in the same system that is used to develop the products is essential to enabling concurrent product and manufacturing process definition. With a concurrent and optimized MPM system, manufacturers can significantly reduce manufacturing costs and time-to-market. 

According to PTC sources the company worked with customers in key vertical markets to define the capabilities of Windchill MPMLink and ensure it would meet the needs of manufacturing companies around the world. Windchill MPMLink is part of the Windchill product family and will be available as part of Windchill 9.0, currently planned for September 2007.