Ashley News / February 20109

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tHE LAuNCH of the new U-Truck platform, in the making for 3 years, ushers in a whole new way of building trucks at Ashok Leyland. It marks a turning point in what this Company has been doing very well for nearly six dec-ades. It cues a radical organisa-tional transformation in terms of products, processes, attitudes and customer engagement.

The ‘U’ in the U-Truck stands for the customer focus that has become a mission at Ashok Ley-land. R Seshasayee, Managing Director, says “The U-Truck is a sublimation of our in-depth understanding of the customer, his requirements, his pain points and converting our insight into a product platform best-suited for him. It is an innovative, future-ready platform that will set a new benchmark in terms of a holisti-cally superior trucking experi-ence for all.”

The first product story of the GENMOD process, the U-Truck building process saw the talent convergence of a cross-functional team from product development, marketing, sourcing and manu-facturing. For Project Leader B Venkatsubramanian, the mandate was clear: “The customer was our

the u-truck – A platform renewalA vehicle for organisational transformation, too

focal point so we put in place a system to truly listen and under-stand what he was saying before putting pen to paper.” The team literally ‘immersed’ themselves is ‘listening to’ and understanding the customer’s voice. The data collected, including several ver-batim transcripts, was ‘analysed’ to draw out relevant nuggets that formed the basis for the prod-uct concepts which were juxta-posed with competitive market offerings to study their viability. “The approach was precise, com-pletely process-oriented and the concept selection, prioritisation and validation exercise threw up relevant solutions,” sums up Venkatsubramanian.

In terms of design, the effort has been to application-optimise the U-Truck products so that op-erating costs of customers are brought down which in turn im-proves their business viability. “Each and every aggregate and component has been engineered and validated to meet certain pre-set performance requirements,” says R R G Menon, ED-Product Development. Starting with the joggled or cranked frames with deeper sections that can house larger, more powerful engines

and are optimised to reduce weight so that the customer can carry more load. “Simply put, the U-Truck offers the customer a huge menu from which he can pick the engine, gear box, axle and suspensions of his choice” Menon added.

The future-readiness of the U-Truck is reflected in its sweep-ing electronic architecture that uses multiplexing to drastically reduce the number of harness-es and wiring. The instrument cluster will feature a bi-lingual LCD screen with a simple trip computer to advice the driver about fuel consumption and road speed patterns while the Gear Shift Advisory System will help optimize both speed and fuel efficiency. An OBU (On Board Unit) – ALERT – will open a two-

the u-truck is a sublimation of our in-depth understanding of the customer, his requirements, his pain points and converting our insight into a product platform best-suited for him. It is an innovative, future-ready platform that will set a new benchmark in terms of a holistically superior trucking experience for all.

Organisational transformation

• Customer-inspired product development • Modular platform improving response to customer needs with customized solutions • Towards made-to-order, from stock-and-sell • Lean inventories of work-in-progress and finished goods • New levels of customer support and commitment: eg.Tatkaal • Lean development process using the program management structure, leading to

- early cross functional involvement and - documented management approval of risk/reward trade-offs

• Early involvement of suppliers for joint development and testing

Ashley News / February 2010 10

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The proud team behind the making of the ‘U-Truck platform, at the launch.

LeyLand diReCt is the one window for all consumers to contact Ashok Leyland directly. It offers services like handling sales queries, parts queries, service queries, providing technical support, booking servicing, giving candid feedback amongst others. This service is first of its kind, offered in vernacular languages and with a strong service network ensuring assured and efficient solutions to every consumer.

Amongst the bevy of services offered under Ley-land Direct, is a unique service - Tatkaal - which takes consumer engagement to a new level in the Indian consumer vehicles market. All it takes is a call and be sure that a response team reaches a stranded customer within four hours anywhere on the Golden Quadrilateral and restores the vehicle back on road within 48 hours, with a committed compensation for any delay.

Leyland Direct and Tatkaal are steps ahead towards a life-long engagement with the customer and a mani-

festation of the Company’s belief that the sale of a vehi-cle is not the end but just a beginning.

way communication system that links the driver to ‘Leyland Direct’, the national helpline. The Compa-ny’s newest service offering is the Tatkaal assurance of a response team reaching a customer in 4 hours anywhere on the Golden Quadrilateral and restoring the vehicle back on to the road within 48 hours, with a committed com-pensation for any delay.

Thanks to the modularity of the platform, the Company is en-dowed with the agility to respond quicker to specific customer de-mands than ever before. “The modularity gives us speed,” says Vinod Dasari, Chief Operating Officer, “it helps us to control our inventories and we can help our vendor partners to plan their in-ventories better. On the man-ufacturing front, it will cue our transition from stock-and-sell to make-to-order system.”

“The U-Truck is a win-win prop-osition for both the customer and our channel partners” said Rajive Saharia, ED-Marketing. “For the customer, the attributes of quick-

er speeds, more trips, improved fuel efficiency, greater comfort and safety and more choices of fully-built options translate into higher revenue, lower operating costs and hence better profit-ability. Reliable aggregates and interfaces with proper matching of consumables ensure long and synchronized service intervals. This, along with our bouquet of service offerings, will help our channel partners to service our customers a whole lot better” he added.

Straddling the entire range of tractors, tippers and haulage trucks in the 16 – 49 tonne seg-ment, the U-Truck will transform the Company’s trucks over a 3-year horizon - the first phase of which will see the roll out of 25 models and a host of variants in 18 months starting April 2010.

The trucking world is chang-ing and changing fast. It is a whole new order that is emerg-ing and the U-Truck will be the vehicle to drive Ashok Leyland into the future.

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U-Truck is truly inspired by the customer and shaped by his

needs. It offers a holistically

superior customer experience. It will transform Indian

trucking.

– r Seshasayee, Managing Director.

The modularity of this innovative

platform will slash time-to-market

and enable us to quickly respond to customer’s unique

needs.

– Vinod k Dasari, Wholetime Director

The U-Truck is designed for high uptime and profitability.

Vitally supplementing the product in this objective are a

bouquet of service products covering the entire product

life cycle.

– rajive Saharia, Executive Director – Marketing

Ashley News / February 201011

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The U-truck will feature a com-pletely electronically governed engine range.

The all-new Neptune 6-cylin-der and 4-cylinder engine range (160-380 hp) are entirely CRS electronic. The low friction, high torque NEPTUNE engines have been globally benchmarked for lower operating costs, lower maintenance, longer life, higher vehicle availability, better com-fort and to achieve world class performance.

The contemporary Neptune engines have been designed and developed entirely by Ashok Leyland engineers from a clean sheet with technical assistance from AVL – an Austrian powertrain and combustion expert design house. A case of Indian frugality and ingenuity meeting European technology and discipline.

The fully loaded 8-litre, 6-cyl-inder and de-contented 5.3 litre,

4-cylinder engines are modular with high degree of component commonality. While the bore and stroke are 112 mm and 135mm respectively, among other fea-tures, Neptune features four-valve single overhead camshaft, unique top down cooling, wet liner with top end cooling and a noise optimised design. The unique trussed block allows peak firing pressures of 220 bar. The Neptune engine range uses latest third generation Bosch common rail fuel injection sys-tem which operates at 1800 bar pressure, and also sports ad-vance features like cruise con-trol and on-board diagnostic capability. The ECU controlled ALEBS (Ashok Leyland Engine Brake System) in the high power 6-cylinder range enhances the safety of the engine apart from improving the brake and fuel efficiency.

The Neptune base architec-ture is with cooled Exhaust Gas Re-circulation (EGR) meeting BSIV emission standards with an option to either upgrade to BS V or re-engineer to BS III with minimal changes.

Also, interestingly on account of their high power density, the 160 to 230 HP Neptune 4-cylinder engines can easily substitute the 6-cylinder H-series engine in that range.

The project was executed on the ‘integrated platform’ concept with time-bound implementation, demanding high commitment by a dedicated lean team.

The programme was imple-mented through partnerships with suppliers right from the concept design stage, and not to mention early involvement by the various extended functions within the or-ganisation through continuous interactions.

Neptune Engine: Many ‘NEW’s

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U-Truck packs long-life aggregates designed

and developed to lower lifecycle costs

and improve reliability.

– r r G Menon, Executive Director

Product Development

Electronics helps monitor the technical condition of

the vehicle real time, for alerts – both for unplanned

as well as predictive maintenance.

– B Venkat Subramanian, Special Director - Future

Vehicles Program

“the contemporary Neptune engines have been designed and developed entirely by Ashok Leyland engineers from a clean sheet with technical assistance from AVL”.– Murali Saketharaman,

SD-Neptune program