Royal Enfield has recently rolled out its first motorcycle from its new Oragadam, India, facility. The motorcycle manufacturer recently has witnessed a huge surge in demand, recording a growth of more than 50 percent for each of the last two years.

“At Royal Enfield we have recorded a major milestone today with this plant at Oragadam becoming operational," said Siddhartha Lal, CEO of Eicher Motors Ltd. "We have been extremely successful in stretching the capacity of our existing 60-year-old plant to record levels – achieving production of over 12,000 motorcycles in the month of March 2013. We have conceived this new facility on a much larger tract of land and created a master-plan that can take the eventual production here to over 500,000 per year.

"With the speedy execution of the first phase of the plan, we have revised our production target upwards in 2013 to 175,000 motorcycles from both plants. However, even as we start commercial production today, we have already begun working on the second phase of expansion at Oragadam, which will further increase the production capacity to 250,000 motorcycles in 2014. With this new facility, we now have the ability to scale our production quantity quickly in response to market demand.”

A new CED paint shop with a painting capacity of 600 motorcycles per day has been installed in the plant. To reduce waste, robotic painting systems and powder coating systems have also been added. Processes such as pinstriping continue to be done through craftsmen.

The vehicle assembly line at Oragadam comes with several features such as ergonomic assembly work stations, torque controlled tools with feedback device and a capacity of producing one motorcycle per minute, or more than 800 per day on two shifts. In addition, chassis dynamometers and a 1.4-kilometer test track within the factory premises allows for the motorcycles to be thoroughly tested before they are dispatched for customers.