Automotive lighting major Lumax is becoming truly international by setting up a product design and development centre at Taiwan. The centre will be inaugurated on May 18, 2016.

The key strategy of the overseas design centre will be to undertake tooling development across Taiwan, Japan, Korea and China, markets which Lumax currently services from India. The Taiwan office will coordinate all the tooling activities in these four locations.

In addition, the overseas design centre will undertake project management of the new lighting products for customers in these countries supported by its collaborator Stanley Electric which is also based in Japan.

“Initially a staff of 8-10 people, who are very experienced in lighting, will be stationed at Taiwan and then we will see how to expand further. They will all be engineers and designers,” Vineet Sahni, CEO of Lumax, told Autocar Professional in an exclusive interaction.

These staffers will design and develop headlamps and rear lamps for almost all companies located in this region while the design centre will act as an additional facility for design and development for the company’s existing customers. This will also serve to further improve Lumax’s product development capability.

Interestingly, while designs and tooling will be developed in Taiwan, the manufacturing process will be undertaken in India at the company’s plants. The centre has involved an investment of Rs 2 crore for software that has been funded through internal accruals.