By Rama Shankar Pandey, Chairman, ACMA Committee on Aftermarket, and Managing Director, Hella India Lighting Ltd.
Travelling on roads is a vital part of everyone’s life. It’s something that just can’t be ignored. We need to travel for both personal and professional purposes. But our safety is an important concern too. Our country boasts of having the world’s second largest road network which caters to just about 1% of the global vehicle population. While this may seem like a lot of uncluttered free miles per vehicle it doesn’t ensure safe travels always. Road accidents take place in high numbers. It is estimated that India is losing its youth aged between 15 and 29 years to road traffic injuries, with our country leading the world in road crash deaths and injuries.
The present team at Automotive Component Manufacturers Association (ACMA) is committed towards increasing road safety and is looking at an ‘accident-free India’. In order to make Indian roads safer, the Government will implement stringent regulations over the next few years, making them in line with global standards practiced worldwide. However, the responsibility does not lie only with the government. As an industry, the automotive sector also has a big role to play.
The industry has realised that only by making the products available once to the road users via OE channel is not enough to manage end-to-end safety on our roads and that it is is equally important for aftersales service to be redefined with the help of digital technologies and innovations so that the vehicle is fit not only when it leaves an OEM factory but it remains fit for safer drives throughout its life time.
When digital disruptions are impacting the global supply chain of the automotive industry, in particular the independent aftermarket industry elsewhere in the world, driving consolidation at distribution level & challenging multi-layered channel structures to redefine repair cost models to end consumer, the Indian auto aftermarket industry has a different set of challenges and a unique opportunity to leverage the digitally-enabled young consumers to leapfrog and develop a modern ecosystem for our industry to keep the vehicles safe. Plagued by very high share of unorganised, sub-standard and spurious products and services, the industry is facing an acute challenge to upgrade its distribution and repair business model and complement the rising share of OES by upgrading, organising and digitising the complete value chain.
As independent aftermarket players are questioning the viability of further investments in to its traditional approach to independent repair chains amid increasing complexity of repair due to mass customisation, electronification and digitisation of today’s automobile, it also throws an interesting opportunity for aftermarket companies to co-create Independent multi-brand repair chains with all the needed capabilities and support systems like in various other regions of the world.
Another important demand of the hour is predictive asset maintenance. If this mechanism is realised, it will be able to predict the possibility of machine or part failures. In-vehicle diagnostic systems are another mechanism of this predictive maintenance. Smart components can aid a vehicle and its parts to indicate when they need maintenance and repair.
Vehicles today demand upgrades and technicians function as diagnostic digital experts who uses scanners and cloud services alike and vehicles don’t have to go to the workshop for multiple service visits. These innovations in technology help make transportation even safer. The industry has to equip local technicians with this support.
ACMA is working towards road safety and has started an initiative for the use of genuine parts. We are providing knowledge about the evaluation of parts and components, distinguishing genuine from fake parts and making well-informed procurement decisions.
ACMA is also working to bring a minimum standard into the independent aftermarket, to help our technicians, retailers and distributors to organise themselves and build progressive digital IT platforms to provide cost solutions. This will help us in our effort against counterfeits and substandard parts which contribute significantly to accidents.
The ACMA ‘Safer Drives’ campaign comes in the wake of sensitizing stakeholders as another industry support through awareness and education about the use of genuine parts to prevent road accidents through our exhibitions like Auto Expo and ACMA Automechanika, using social media as the primary means of communication.
After the success of the first version of ACMA Safer Drives at ACMA Automechanika 2017, the campaign returns in an improved version at ACMA Automechanika 2019. To make more people aware about the initiative and to keep the ‘Safer & Innovative Parts for Safer Drives’ vision intact, ACMA has come up with a collaborative approach at all its events and exhibitions where members are encouraged to participate on a common platform and present their company’s initiatives to a larger mass in an economical way.
The activities of the ACMA Aftermarket Committee have primarily focused on initiatives to shape the consumer business (popularly known as automotive aftermarket business) of the auto components industry. Most of the activities of the committee have addressed the pain points of the industry, putting needed enablers on the agenda for the industry to flourish. The Committee has initiated capacity-building and support to its constituents including distributors, dealers, technicians, retailers and their respective associations and move forward with both trade & consumer awareness about safety criticality of aftermarket products. Many awareness programs have been organized about evolving aftermarket eco-system, preparing aftermarket channel partners for a digital economy, GST and collective responsibility of citizens in imbibing road safety as a mission.