Ashok Leyland's ISO 14001 Journey

The company's product range included buses, trucks, cargo, engines, defense and fire fighting vehicles (under the special vehicles category). It was one of the largest suppliers for India's state transport corporations. Reportedly six out of every 10 state transport corporation buses were manufactured by ALL (Refer Exhibit I for ALL's product profile).

To mitigate the negative effects of the recession in the Indian CV industry during 1997-99, ALL implemented various cost cutting measures including manufacturing practices such as Just-In-Time (JIT). To reduce inventory carrying costs, the company entered into agreements with its suppliers to get parts from them on a daily basis.

It also focused on its warehousing practices to reduce inventory of spares and finished products. Besides ALL, the M&HCV segment in India had only one major player, the Tata owned TELCO. The MNC Volvo was only a small player. Unlike TELCO, which diversified into the passenger car segment, ALL and Volvo focused only on the CV segment of the automobile market.

In 2000, ALL's overall market share was 33%, with around 98.7% of its sales volume being accounted for by M&HCVs. Over the years, ALL became one of the largest manufacturers in India's CV segment through a number of technological innovations (Refer Exhibit II for ALL's financials).