Maruti Suzuki’s contract manufacturing company Suzuki Motor Gujarat (SMG) will shut production for three consecutive Saturdays in August and may also bring down working to just one shift owing to the semiconductor shortage.
SMG, which is owned by Suzuki Motor Company, Japan, supplies fully built cars such as Swift and Baleno to Maruti Suzuki India (MSIL) for sale. This is for the first time that India’s largest carmaker has called out a production issue due to non-availability of chips.
“Owing to the semiconductor shortage situation, MSIL has been informed by its contract manufacturing company, SMG, that production will be partially impacted in this month. SMG will tentatively not carry out production on the three Saturdays (7th, 14th and 21st August),” MSIL said in statement.
So far, the car market leader has been managing production flawlessly despite the crunch in semiconductor availability. Its peers like Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M), MG Motor and Ford India had to undertake production cuts due to the chip shortage.
“Some of the production lines may see temporary reduction from 2-shift to 1-shift working (at SMG). As the situation is dynamic and uncertain, the company will monitor and take a day-to-day decision on models, lines or shifts to optimize resources for maximum efficiency,” MSIL added.
Shortage of semiconductors has so far severely impacted M&M more than other brands, especially for the Thar sport utility vehicle model. Due to the chip shortage, which M&M sources from Bosch, Thar’s waiting period had shot up to nine months recently.
Tata Motors-controlled Jaguar Land Rover has predicted production loss of nearly 100000 units in the April-September period due to the chip shortage.
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