Bicycle Industry Case Study

Introduction to Bicycle Industry:

Bicycle industry was started in 19th century. Currently the industry has a sales turnover of more than 12 million cycles. The industry is firmly established in India wherein it sports kids’ cycles to sports cycles to adventure cycles. In volume terms, Indian bicycle industry is second highest producer of bicycle in world. China is number one in bicycle manufacturing.

Introduction to Hero cycles Ludhiana:

Brijmohan Lal Munjal, Satyanand Munjal and O. P. Munjal founded Hero Cycles Limited. Munjal brothers came from a small town in Pakistan called Kamalia. Inception of the idea striked when they first started a business of bicycle spare parts in Amritsar in 1944. After some years , they started manufacturing

This is what has helped the group to achieve breakthrough in the businesses they ventured into. They have maintained profit level in all the product category they are currently in. The group is conservative in its approach, yet focused. This style of management has earned respect from the investors, shareholders, employees, suppliers and customers. It has also earned recognition from worldwide investors and customers.

There are number of factors from which the group has been inspired. Most of them germinate from Japanese philosophy of management. Hero Cycles was the first in India to introduce the concept of Just-In-Time inventory. The group has implemented operational techniques to improve its operational efficiency. Every assembly worker has been trained to work on multiple machines. These workers generally work on two machines to save time and increase efficiency. The cycle time is just one day. The vendor supplies raw material in the morning, and the raw material is converted into the finished product by the end of the day. Hero group has mastered the Japanese style of just-in-time philosophy for Indian

This also significantly reduces cost of inventory and transportation costs. Since 1965, there has been continuous change in process and the process has been improving over the time. The company has collaborated with National Bicycle Industry, subsidiary of Matushita Group, to manufacture high performance bicycles. The company has invested heavily in its research & development facility so that it can produce innovative products to meet the market requirements. Due to this the company can catch up with the competitors’ products in just 2 days while complex products can take time up to 10