Shinji Aoyama, chief officer, regional operations (Asia & Oceania), Honda Motor Company on Wednesday said Honda could overtake former partner Hero to become the largest two-wheeler maker in India by 2020. Aoyama said, "2020 could be a possible year for us to become number one." Honda Motorcycle & Scooter India (HMSI) on Wednesday commissioned the fourth assembly line at its manufacturing facility in Narsapura (Karnataka) turning it into the largest plant among Honda's two-wheeler operations globally. The Narsapura plant can produce 2.4 million two-wheelers annually. With this latest capacity expansion of 600,000 units, HMSI now has totalled annual production capacity of 6.4 million units across four plants in Haryana, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Karnataka. India now has become the largest production hub for two-wheelers for Honda globally. In terms of sales, India overtook Indonesia to emerge as the largest market for Honda's two-wheeler operations last fiscal. India contributed 28% to Honda's global two-wheeler sales in the last financial year. Aoyama informed, "The growing Indian 2W market is top priority for Honda. To better meet dynamic market demand and to prepare for future opportunities, today Honda has inaugurated the fourth assembly line in Karnataka plant. Aoyama informed, "The growing Indian 2W market...
The new BMW Z4 has been officially teased for the first time, with a single, shadowy image of the new sports car, plus a promised unveiling next month. The new Audi TT and Mercedes SLC rival will make its debut on 17 August. While that rules out a Frankfurt Motor Show reveal, it matches up nicely with the 2017 edition of the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance and Monterey Car Week. Best convertible cars to buy now With BMW choosing Pebble Beach to debut the Z4, it’s likely that we’ll see the car in concept form rather than the finished product – full debuts are few and far between at the Monterey Car Week, though concept vehicles, one-offs and special edition cars often break cover. Therefore, we could see BMW unfurl the new Z4 in a similar manner to the all-new 8 Series, with a revealing concept vehicle to whet the appetite for the production model.Our exclusive images show how the new two-seat roadster could look when it arrives. It has already been spotted testing on multiple occasions, with the most recent spyshots showing it winter testing with a slightly more revealing disguise compared to earlier mules lapping the Nurburgring. The...
Oil futures climbed toward the $50 level on Thursday, driven higher by a bullish outlook following weekly U.S. inventory data, but market participants expected the commodity to trade in a narrow range ahead of a OPEC meeting next week. On the New York Mercantile Exchange, light, sweet crude futures for delivery in September CLU7, -0.67% climbed 23 cents, or 0.5%, to $49.84 a barrel, after trading as low as $49.12 earlier in the session. October Brent crude LCOV7, -0.29% on London’s ICE Futures exchange rose 38 cents, or 0.7%, to $52.74, bouncing back from a loss of as much as 0.9% earlier on Thursday.Oil has experienced fitful trade over the past several weeks, but has managed to drift higher within range of its 200-day moving average at $49.45 a barrel, as investors have grappled with the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries’s attempts to cap global output, along with other major producers. U.S. shale producers have been the biggest headwind to OPEC’s efforts to stem output. Meanwhile, an agreement led by the cartel and major crude producers is set to expire at the end of the first quarter in 2018. We are going to be relatively range-bound “I think we...
The 3.1 million-lb scaffolding system is contributing to the replacement of the 50-year-old Gerald Desmond Bridge Construction crews lifted a massive 3.1 million-lb piece of scaffolding on Tuesday in Long Beach, Calif., as part of the construction of a bridge connecting Long Beach to Terminal Island. Workers in hard hats looked to the sky as a crew hoisted the $10 million steel piece of equipment designed in Norway and constructed in China, then moved by a super-powered jack. Longer than two football fields, the scaffolding system eliminates less reliable, traditional wooden scaffolding systems that can be more easily knocked out by wind or an earthquake. 1 Construction crews Construction crews lifted a massive 3.1 million-lb piece of scaffolding on Tuesday in Long Beach, Calif., as part of the construction of a bridge connecting Long Beach to Terminal Island. 2 Workers Workers in hard hats looked to the sky as a crew hoisted the $10 million steel piece of equipment designed in Norway and constructed in China, then moved by a super-powered jack. Longer than two football fields, the scaffolding system eliminates less reliable, traditional wooden scaffolding systems that can be more easily knocked out by wind or an earthquake. 3 The equipment Already the...
Vehicle-makers are introducing more wearable equipment to alleviate stresses and strains, giving assembly workers a somewhat cyborg look. AMS reports on the latest innovations being rolled out by Audi and BMW As the robots used in automotive manufacturing become more human, able to work collaboratively and intelligently, in one sense human operatives are becoming more machine-like. Wearable technology such as ‘medical’ gloves or scanner gloves, plus exoskeletons for the upper and lower body are starting to give line workers a distinctly cyborg look. Of course, it’s not about aesthetics but ergonomics; the alleviation of stresses and strains plus the fatigue which makes errors more likely, therefore improving production efficiency and quality. Persistent modernisation @AutomotiveSolutions In March this year, BMW announced the “persistent modernisation” of its working environments to “further reduce ergonomically unfavourable and strenuous tasks, giving workers an opportunity to apply their unique cognitive skills to the best effect”. The OEM already uses exoskeletons in assembly but will boost the number of upper-body supports from 24 to 64 in 2017. This is a response to high demand at the Spartanburg plant, South Carolina, which operates the existing 24 devices and has a history of “innovative value creation”, says Christian Dahmen,...
Swiss drilling contractor Transocean has posted a half year loss in revenues, due to a number of “unfavorable items” bringing down the accounts. Revenues for up to June 2017 amounted to £1.1billion down compared to the £1.6billion made in the same period last year. The company made a loss of £1.2billion compared to a pre-tax profit of £343million last year Second quarter 2017 results included net unfavorable items of £1.3 billion write down including a loss on the divestiture of the jackup fleet, impairment of the midwater floater asset group, the early retirement of debt as well as litigation matters and restructuring charges. Revenues for up to June 2017 amounted to £1.1billion down compared to the £1.6billion made in the same period last year. The company made a loss of £1.2billion compared to a pre-tax profit of £343million last year Second quarter 2017 results included net unfavorable items of £1.3 billion write down including a loss on the divestiture of the jackup fleet, impairment of the midwater floater asset group, the early retirement of debt as well as litigation matters and restructuring charges. The company @Energy Revenues for up to June 2017 amounted to £1.1billion down compared to the £1.6billion...
Since Bedrock Real Estate purchased The Detroit News building in 2014, the company has gutted the structure and created a modern workspace with custom-designed furniture by local craftsmen Who isn't interested in seeing what the new owners do to your house after the sale? A visit last week to the old Detroit News building on West Lafayette led to one simple conclusion: Wow — they’ve done a lot, from custom-made furniture to a historically restored lobby and fun newspaper allusions throughout the building design. “We’ve had a blast designing the space,” said furniture designer Chrissy Fehan of dPop, the outfit that does interiors on all buildings renovated by Dan Gilbert’s Bedrock real-estate empire.It’s great to have a client who lets us do these things.” Specially designed banquettes? A conference table with seats on swings? Floors completely cleared of all walls and barriers? Old George G. Booth’s head must be spinning. News Publisher Booth hired his friend Albert Kahn in 1916 to design the blocklong building, which the newspaper occupied until several years ago when the landmark was sold to Bedrock. In 2014, The News and the Detroit Free Press, which moved into the bottom floors in 1998, relocated to Minoru...
Electric bike market advisers eCycleElectric have concluded that the U.S. market for pedal assisted bikes could have grown year-on-year by as much as 70% in 2016. The consultancy run by Patrick and Ed Benjamin has crunched the numbers and believes that the U.S. imported a minimum of 196,000 and likely as many as 251,000 units in 2016. A further 15,000 are believed to have been built domestically by assemblers, putting the firm’s low estimate at 211,000 units. Ed Benjamin told CyclingIndustry.News: “Due to complexities in tracking these numbers, we suspect that the actual number may 20% higher, thus giving us our upper-limit figure of 251,000 units. That would represent a 70% increase.” Speaking on the difficulties of tracking the market’s exact figures, Benjamin said that without a specific HS code, something which pedal assist bikes lack at present, records are harder to define. “This leads to a tedious process of evaluating thousands of individual records, one at a time, by hand. Such a process is subject to both human errors and definition confusion; many products that would not be conventionally regarded as an “electric bike” may be listed as such, or in similar terms,” offers Benjamin. “Our figure of 40,000...
Sarasota, Fla. — There's an energy and enthusiasm at Octex LLC that's palpable and seemingly infectious. Maybe it's the sunshine of Sarasota. More likely, it's the vision of President John Hoskins and his team that's sprinkled with youthful leaders. Either way, this contract manufacturer/injection molder is expanding physically and on its balance sheet. Examples abound. This month, Octex moved equipment into its newly constructed 4,000-square-foot white room. This room for medical molding has a reflective deep blue floor and wall of windows that give office staff a needed view into the work room, connecting shop to office. In the fourth quarter @Industry In the fourth quarter, Hoskins said the company will expand its clean room to 6,000 square feet. These moves are all part of the company's master plan, which by the end of 2020 will see the complete reconfiguration of the building, moving the entrance to the current rear of the complex. The company's in-house lab — currently at 3,000 square feet — will expand to 10,000 in the next two to three years. That lab, formerly Octex Labs, now goes by the name Omnia Scientific. All of this is on the heels of the 2015 purchase of Choice...
Adams also came to understand how important it was that his carefully crafted photos were reproduced to best effect. At Bender’s invitation, he joined the prestigious Roxburghe Club, an association devoted to fine printing and high standards in book arts.