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Mr K. Mahesh, Chairman and Managing Director, Sundaram Brake Linings Ltd (right), and Mr R. Seshasayee, Managing Director, Ashok Leyland Ltd, at the Sundaram Brake Linings Silver Jubilee celebrations in Chennai on Friday.

CHENNAI, March 7

SUNDARAM Brake Linings Ltd (SBL), part of the TVS group, will work towards offering asbestos-free brake linings for the entire range of vehicles in India before January 2004.

Making this assertion at a function held here today to mark the silver jubilee of the company, Mr K. Mahesh, Chairman and Managing Director, SBL, said the company would take this up as a challenge.

As a tier-II supplier to the automobile industry, he said SBL was under constant pressure from the tier-I suppliers as well as the original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to cut costs, and wondered how long this pressure on the tier-II suppliers would continue.

Mr Mahesh also regretted that rarely did the tier-I suppliers and OEMs listen to the tier-II suppliers like his company. His company's position was like the youngest in a Hindu family, where everyone advised the person on what to do, but never listened to what that person had to say, he remarked.

Tracing his company's progress over the years, Mr Mahesh said SBL had been fortunate to get help from various productivity and quality management experts and experts in lean manufacturing over the years, all of which had helped it become what it was today.

The greatest thing that could have happened to SBL, he said, was in 1995, when it became an Indian company, after its partnership with Abex Corporation of the US ended.

Mr Mahesh pointed out that even earlier, rather than go in for expensive CNC machines, thanks to in-house expertise, the company was able to re-engineer the machines given by Abex Corporation and achieve much higher productivity levels, at substantially lower costs.

Mr R. Seshasayee, Managing Director, Ashok Leyland Ltd, who was the chief guest, said the silver jubilee celebrations marked the success of enterprise, of courage, and of some good, ethical business values. It was also an occasion to celebrate a basic economic tenet that the manufacturing sector would be the engine of growth for the country, rather than the service sector, which was what most believed in.

"There is no possibility of growth without going through the manufacturing process," he said.

Mr Seshasayee said gaining competitive advantage in manufacturing was only a transient strength. What was even more important was to acquire intellectual capital — looking beyond the products in the market place and the ideas on the drawing board, and looking at ideas that would help create intellectual patents.

A whole host of speakers including Mr Suresh Krishna, Chairman and Managing Director, Sundram Fasteners Ltd, Mr S. Viji, Joint Managing Director, Brakes India Ltd, Mr N. Krishnan, Managing Director, IMPAL, all TVS group companies, and some overseas distributors of Sundaram Brake, paid tributes to the company.

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