Distributed product design and development of electric scooter

Abstract

On a warm November afternoon, Alex Stewart, the director of Global Product Development team at Euro Motors, was sitting with Jonathan Muller, the CEO of Euro Motors. After a brisk discussion on last night’s Germany’s football match against Italy, Alex brought up the discussion he recently had with Rajat Sharma, the head of Asia Pacific Team. Rajat wanted to persuade the Global team to open up a dedicated Product Design centre at their Katpadi plant in India. He argued that India is a huge market and Indian customers have very unique taste. He pushed for a significant change in product specification in order to comply with the ARAI standards. He also advocated for a dedicated initial service complain support team. Although Alex agreed with Rajat’s arguments, he was wary of the fact that product design team was extremely critical. He still wasn’t completely sure of opening up an independent product development team in India. Instead, he proposed to Jonathan that he would deploy a 5 membered team in India who would be directly reporting to the global headquarter. The team would take care of region specific customization. Over time, a full-fledged engineering centre would be established in India that would work together with the global team and augment the product development capabilities of Euro Motors. Jonathan, while agreed with Alex over his concerns, was also aware of the huge potential the Indian market presented and how any wrong decision in the nascent stage can cost the company billions.