TCS Lab to digitize Edward de Bono's techniques
Mumbai: The Tata Consultancy Services has tied up with Dr Edward de Bono and de Bono Thinking Systems (dBTS) to offer business transformation solutions to organisations. Edward de Bono is famous for his 'Six Thinking Hat' and 'Lateral Thinking' techniques to change the way people think.

The key aspect of this tie-up is the development of a digital version of de Bono's techniques by TCS's Creativity and Innovation Lab. TCS now owns the IPR for this software, which is called `de Bono Thinking 24x7' (dBT 24x7).

"I have developed tools for lateral thinking and am now working with TCS to turn these into usable digitised versions that can be utilised by all organisations across the globe," de Bono stated at a news conference here.

The dBT 24x7 solution is an anytime-anywhere one, which allows users to collaborate and apply de Bono's techniques regardless of their location.

The solution will be offered to global customers through the existing distributor network of dBTS, an outfit that supports over 900 certified de Bono instructors in 40 countries.

TCS has been working with de Bono techniques for six years now, said a senior TCS official.
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Glaxo to set up India's first vaccine plant at Nasik
Nasik: Glaxo Smithkline or GSK Pharma has laid out plans to set up India's first vaccine-making plant in Nasik. The company says this plant will start functioning in about a year.

Glaxo is also revamping its existing drug factory nearby. It's being equipped with a packaging plant for the vaccines that will be made at the new factory. Glaxo expects to produce enough vaccines in a couple of years to meet the demand in India.

Glaxo is a world leader in vaccines and this is its first plant outside Europe. It will cost about 20 million dollars.

The company says this investment is being made with an eye on the huge local market for vaccines. The private market for vaccines in India is estimated at Rs400 crore. Glaxo is also eyeing the huge demand from the government for its various vaccination programmes across the country.
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Mahindra ties up with Renault for the Logan
Mumbai: Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd (M&M) has announced a 51:49 joint venture with Renault, to produce and sell the latter's car, Logan, in India. Separately, discussions are on between the two parties to sell M&M SUVs abroad through the French auto major's distribution channel.

At a press briefing, Mr Anand Mahindra, Vice-Chairman & Managing Director, M&M, said the company's focus continues to be its SUV business; the arrangement with Renault is for a specific product, due for rollout here in the first half of 2007. M&M officials stated that this was a single product alliance for making the Logan.

The Logan, an entry-level C segment car with its production hub currently in Romania (where Renault owns local car-maker Dacia), is being primed for a global production figure of 600,000 units in the next two-three years.

In Asia, Iran is set to host a 300,000 unit-strong capacity for the car by 2006. It compares with Mahindra-Renault's 50,000 units. Company officials also discounted the regional impact of the Iranian capacity and hoped for export to the SAARC markets and South Africa.

The Logan's multi-location manufacture (in Romania, Russia, Morocco, Columbia, Iran and India) should help tackle the problem of a strong euro as production bases outside can be tapped for component sourcing, M&M officials said. The car is expected to host 55-60 per cent local content within two years of launch.

In Romania, the Logan costs 6000 euros (around Rs3.45 lakh), Renault officials said. The Rs 700-crore joint venture investment will be a mix of equity and debt, with M&M as majority partner. In the new venture, M&M will handle finance and distribution, along with HR and Communication, while Renault will be responsible for purchase, engineering and quality. The Indian company will have four board members to Renault's three, the former appointing the managing director, the latter the non-executive chairman.

The Logan will be manufactured for a fee at M&M's Nashik, Zaheerabad or Haridwar facility and sold under the Mahindra-Renault brand.
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Bosch supplies first CRDi engine for M&M's Scorpio
Bangalore: Auto parts company Mico has said that it has supplied its first locally produced common rail diesel injection system (CRDi) for Mahindra's newly launched Scorpio 2.6 Turbo.

A press statement from Mico said Mahindra and Mahindra with Mico and Bosch engineers have produced this technology under local conditions. A series of tests were also conducted in Spain, Germany and Switzerland.

Bosch last year announced an investment of Rs1,000 crore through its flagship company Motor Industries Co Ltd. Of this, Rs550 crore will be spent towards introduction of a common rail system, including application, testing and manufacturing.

Bosch has sold over 15 million systems globally so far.
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L&T bags Rs.130 crore order for tubular reactor system
Mumbai: Larsen & Toubro has won an order worth Rs130 crore from Kuwait Olefins Company KSC, Kuwait, a joint venture between Dow Chemical Company, US and PIC Kuwait. The order is for the supply of a tubular reactor system. It will be executed by L&T's Heavy Engineering Division, said a news release from the company.

This equipment, weighing 1,500 mt, will be one of the largest such systems in the world when installed, it said.

L&T officials said that the order indicated the confidence that clients and consultants worldwide had in L&T for its capability to manufacture critical equipment. It also demonstrated L&T's ability to answer the growing demand for high-tech heavy engineering equipment.

L&T's Heavy Engineering Division is already executing another contract valued at Rs45 crore for the supply of a reactor for Equate Petrochemicals in Kuwait. Earlier, this division had successfully supplied such critical reactors for downstream petrochemical projects in China, said the release.
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TVS Logistics buys into CJ Components
Chennai: TVS Logistics, through its subsidiary TVS Automotive Europe Ltd., has acquired an 80 per cent stake in CJ Components, a family-owned company offering services such as components sourcing, supply chain management, warehousing and logistics support. Following the acquisition, the new company, TVS CJ Components Ltd, will operate out of Daventry, UK.

Announcing the acquisition company officials said that the new company will drive TVS's business plans in Europe, which in the short term includes expanding into Germany. TVS Logistics now has access to a wider client base in Europe while the UK company gains access to manufacturers in India and components suppliers here reach clients in Europe. Clients in hand and new ones, such as JCB, Lister Petter, an engine manufacturer, Perkins and Land Rover, with whom discussions are at an advanced stage, will contribute to the company's growth plans, the company said.

The tie-up with the UK company will also help TVS Logistics realise its ambition of becoming an end-to-end provider of logistics services. With TVS CJC in UK, TVS Logistics Iberia in Spain and another such joint venture planned in Germany, its European business is set to touch Rs50 crore this year and double in the coming year. The company is targeting a turnover of Rs500 crore for 2006-07.

CJ Components business activities also include value-added services such as packing and kitting, barcoding, warehousing, logistics, Just-in-time deliveries.
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TVS Motor plans new manufacturing units
Chennai: TVS Motor Company's board of directors has approved the company's investment in three greenfield plants, involving a total outlay of Rs415 crore.

One of the facilities will be a manufacturing facility in Indonesia, with an initial capacity to produce 1.2 lakh two-wheelers a year. The proposed investment would be $50 million (Rs225 crore).

The project is to be executed by a company incorporated for that purpose in Indonesia. Initially, the company will be fully-owned by TVS Motor, but a joint venture partner coming on board at a later stage is possible.

The second project is a greenfield unit for two-wheelers in Himachal Pradesh. The unit will be able to produce three lakh units. TVS Motor is investing Rs90 crore in the venture.

The third is a plant for producing three lakh three-wheelers a year at Mysore. The estimated cost of the project is Rs100 crore.

Company officials said that all the three plants would be in production between a year to eighteen months from now. For funding the projects, the company has organised a line of credit for $100 million (Rs 437 crore), at a rate of 95 basis points over Libor.
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CDMA group comes together on frequency allocation
New Delhi: The Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA)-based mobile phone service providers and equipment suppliers have come together to push for allocation of additional frequency in 1900 Mhz. At a joint press conference, attended by representatives from Reliance Infocomm, Tata Teleservices, Ericsson, Nortel, Lucent, Qualcomm and LG, the CDMA Development Group urged the Government to follow global standards while allocating radio frequency.

The debate revolves around the allocation of the 1900-Mhz radio frequency band for both CDMA operators and Global System for Mobile (GSM) based operators. While CDMA operators say that offering services in any other band would make the business unviable, GSM operators have expressed concerns of interference if the band was shared.
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Nucleus into four year deal with GM financial arm
New Delhi: Nucleus Software Exports Ltd, a provider of integrated software products for banks and financial institutions, has announced that it has bagged a four-year mega contract from the financial services arm of General Motors to deploy its flagship product FinnOne across 37 countries.

FinnOne is an integrated applications suite for banks and financial solutions companies and provides a solution for the asset as well as the liability side of business, core financial accounting and customer service.

The roll-out, which would be completed in Italy by this year-end, currently excludes North America.
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Sify deploys Ipv6
Chennai: Sify Ltd has announced the commercial deployment of Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6), the next generation IP protocol designed to replace the current IPv4.

Just as people have a unique phone number for their use, IPv6 ensures unique IP addresses. Each address is a numerical string of a hundred numerals that is unique to every device, according to a Sify release.

This deployment would enable Sify customers to allocate unique IP addresses for all their devices with the trillions of IP addresses available under IPv6 instead of sharing IP addresses using techniques such as Network Translation, the release said.
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