Abstract:
There is a drastic reduction in registered firms in the Indian auto industry. The variation in profitability levels among the firms from different tiers of the Indian auto industry is also huge. The context in which the firms operate, as well as the issues they face, differ. The business performance of the firms is a big question. A few fundamental questions about performance enablers per firm tier and their interaction effects on reaching desired profitability have mostly gone unanswered. Based on the eight-year secondary data (2012–2019), the authors selected vital factors contributing to profitability and tested their influence on three sample firms representing different tiers using computational intelligence capabilities. Our research helped identify specific contributory factors per tier and develop the optimal combination of interaction effects among the contributory factors to achieve the desired profitability levels. No such studies exist in the literature. These studies give firms in the Indian auto industry the confidence and direction to concentrate on the critical input variable combinations and their operating levels to achieve their organizational goals and ensure business sustenance