Hero Cycle is the world's largest bicycle manufacturer based in India. It has continuously innovated and changed its production processes since 1956. Some key aspects of Hero Cycle's operations management that have contributed to its success include having 90% of vendors located within 10 km to reduce costs, developing new products within 2-10 days, and achieving a 50% market share in India. Hero Cycle focuses heavily on quality control, total quality management, and just-in-time manufacturing principles. It aims to deliver high quality products to customers through efficient processes and continuous improvement efforts.

2. Produce just in time.

3. No storage of materials at work.

4. No obstruction in material flow.

5. Everything in place and a place for everything.

6. Therefore Company has adopted the entire key concept like TQM, TPM, Kaizen, TEI, TWE etc.

7. Every employee Junior or Senior is treated equally and they traine, educate, motivate and encourage there employees and to there dealers and vendors they also provide finance of 50% of cost of modification of showroom. They provide regular incentives and interest to there workers.

9. 90 percent of vendors are located within 10 km 90 percent of Hero Cycle’s vendors are located within 10 km due to which cost of vendor is reduced as a percentage of sales.

10. Speed in development of new product: Company can design a simple model in just 2-3 days; more complex model can be done in 10 days.

11. Manufacturing Capability: Bicycle manufactured in 1956 is 639 and bicycle manufactured in 2002-03 is 6.1 million. Bicycle manufactured per day is 16000 approx. and market share of Hero Cycle in India is 50% plus.

12. Technical Collaboration with National Bicycle: Hero Cycle has a technical collaboration with National Bicycle industries, which is a part of the Matsushita group, to manufacture high-end bicycle.

13. Strong R&D and IT: Hero is an IT-savy, technology-oriented company. Company’s R&D response quickly to the changing market demand. If there competitor launches any new product, they response quickly to that need.

14. Specialization is the hallmark: Specialization is the hallmark of the manufacturing process at Hero Cycle. Experts are involved right from the stage of choosing the highest quality raw material to applying to various techniques.

15. TQM (total quality management): Company provides a best quality product to there customers. For this they has a concept called QMS (quality management system), this system audit the quality of the end product.

16. Various inspection stages: This inspection has dramatically reduced defects in end-products. Market complaint has declined by 63 percent between Jan, 2001 and 2003.

17. Concept of Kaizen: Kaizen is a concept that’s midway between an existing situation and striking innovation. It means common sense and continuous improvement, which comes from people themselves.

18. Helps Vendors and dealers: They supports there vendors by providing them the tools for manufacturing apart from drawings, specifications and financial help. There dealers are provided with standard showroom design specification and they finance them up to 50 percent of the cost of modification.

19. Feed backs from Dealers: To keep in touch with market trend there field executives regularly takes feed backs from there dealers. And there Advertising agency, Hindustan Thompson, also does research work for them and tells them when is the right time to launch a product for a particular segment.

20. Make to Stock: Hero cycle is a make to stock kind of company. There Raw Material and Finished goods is always high while work-in-progress is low.

21. Education and training: Every employee, senior or junior, is treated equally at Hero and they regularly discuss issues with engineers that how to prevent machine downtime and increase productivity.

22. Quality Control: Company just check if any defective component returned by there dealers. And if there is any they held a meeting and corrective action is taken by the department.

23. Does not store stock for more than two days: Company does not store raw material inventory for more than two days. Work-in-progress does not stay to factory for more than half a day and finished good inventory is either removed from the shop floor or sent directly to the dealers.

24. World’s largest manufacturer: Hero Cycle is the world’s largest bicycle manufacturer, whose core strength is the first-rate production competence.

25. All key concepts such as TQM, TPM (total productive maintenance), Just-in-time (JIT), Kaizen and sex sigma.

26. Concepts like MTBT and MTTR for machine: In day to day maintenance, they has adopted concepts like MTBF (mean time between failure) and MTTR (mean time to repair). They has also developed a 4E’s safety program i.e. education, engineering, enforcement and encouragement.

27. Availability: Due to easy reach to vendors deliver of the products become easy, so products are easily available for there customers.

28. These all characteristics and uniqueness in their productions and operations management makes Hero Cycle a different company. These all helps in the successful inventory management which makes the company a profitable organization. The changes which make in their model are minor which means that low variety but high volume. This is the characteristics of Make to Stock organization.

29. Slides 4-5: leadership and its dimensions followed at the company