Suzuki Motor Corporation and Maruti Suzuki India Limited has announced plans to establish the Osamu Suzuki Centre of Excellence (OSCOE) in India. This initiative is intended as a tribute to the late Osamu Suzuki, the former Chairman of Suzuki Motor Corporation, who passed away in December 2024.
The proposed centre will be located in Gujarat and Haryana, both of which are critical hubs for India’s automotive and manufacturing industries. The facility will serve as a dedicated platform to promote Japanese manufacturing practices that prioritise efficiency, inclusivity and competitiveness. These principles played a significant role in shaping Maruti Suzuki's operational success and are now being formalised into structured training and development programmes.
The Osamu Suzuki Centre of Excellence will work to strengthen India's manufacturing capabilities beyond the automotive sector. Its objectives include supporting the national goal of boosting industrial output, enhancing the quality and global competitiveness of the entire supplier network — including tier-1, tier-2 and tier-3 component manufacturers — and creating academic-industry collaborations for sustained knowledge transfer. Programmes at OSCOE will involve formal education, workshops, seminars and discussions designed to institutionalise best practices in production and operations.
The late Osamu Suzuki is credited with playing a transformative role in making vehicle ownership affordable for Indian consumers, leading to India’s emergence as a significant automotive manufacturing nation. His strategic approach to localisation, supplier development and frugal engineering created an ecosystem that continues to power India’s automotive exports and production capabilities today.
His contributions have earned widespread recognition, including India’s Padma Bhushan in 2007 and posthumously, the Padma Vibhushan in 2025. The establishment of OSCOE underlines the long-term influence of his ideas and signals a move by Suzuki and Maruti to institutionalise these concepts in a way that benefits future generations of manufacturers and engineers.
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