Titan - The Outsourcing Journey

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Over the years, the Hosur facility went on to become one of the largest integrated watch-manufacturing units in the world, employing around 3500 people. The facilities in Hosur included a computer aided design (CAD)5 and prototyping unit, a comprehensive tool room with capacity for manufacture of precision tools and die-sets. Besides, Titan had a wide range of computerized numeric control (CNC6) machines. Gold was refined and alloyed in-house at the Hosur plant, but the design center for jewelry was located in Bangalore. From the very beginning, Titan had used cost cutting as a means to achieve competitiveness and improve profitability. It realized that sustained advantage in the marketplace could be achieved only by keeping costs low and launching innovative/technologically superior products. To improve productivity, quality and safety, Titan automated select manual and semi-automatic operations in movement and case manufacturing. Titan had always implemented World Class Manufacturing (WCM) practices that helped keep costs under control. As part of the WCM initiatives, Titan implemented practices such as Just-In-Time Manufacturing, Total Productive Maintenance and Total Quality Control.

In 1996, Titan increased the Hosur plant's capacity to cater to the growing domestic and international demand from 3.5 million to 4.18 million units per annum. In 1997, the company launched its own range of table clocks to cash in on the fact that there were no branded players in the segment. In the same year, it began to manufacture watches for several prestigious international brands. In 1998, Titan decided to discontinue the joint venture arrangement with Timex due to certain differences. In the same year, it increased the capacity of the Hosur plant to 5 million watches.

Titan sold its products through a network of exclusive Titan showrooms called, 'The World of Titan' and 'Time Zone,' a multi-brand watch showroom selling premium domestic and international brands, in addition to over 5500 dealer networks across 1400 towns in India. In its efforts towards developing its export markets, Titan started selling its products in over 40 European, West Asian and South East Asian markets through its subsidiaries in London, Singapore and Dubai.

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5] CAD systems enable engineers and architects to carry out design activities on the computer. They allow engineers to view a design from any angle on the computer and make it possible to zoom in or out for close-ups and long-distance views. It also keeps track of design dependencies so that when the engineer changes one value, all other values that depend on it are automatically changed accordingly.
6] CNC machines are machines that are controlled by computer programs and run as dictated by the program, independent of the operator.