A visit to TVS Motors, Bangalore[/b]
The winner of the Technology Award 2002, The Asian network for Quality Award 2004, TPM excellence Award 2008 and not to forget, the only two-wheeler manufacturing company in the world to win the coveted Deming Prize for Total Quality Management, TVS Motors[/b], India’s third largest two-wheeler manufacturer after Hero and Bajaj, was our third Industrial visit’s destination.
Spread over a huge area of 3 hectares and employing over 6500 employees, it provided a very good opportunity for our batch to understand the behind the scene scenario of the corporate world.
On entering the campus we were greeted by a whole school of mopeds, scooters and bikes, fresh out of the assembly line, waiting to be ferried to their respective retail destinations-evidence of the magnanimous nature of the proceedings at the plant.
The whole visit of the plant was coordinated by Mr.Vignesh and Mr.Pramod (HR,operations) ,who guided us throughout our visit and lent us valuable insight on the company’s working procedures.
We were told that the plant we were visiting was the Mother plant and it had three units. The first unit dealt with mopeds and TVS Wego, the second unit dealt with bikes(except for TVS Apache) while the third unit was the transmission unit. This plant was also responsible for the three wheelers that TVS manufactures and also houses all HR and operational activities. It was also responsible for TVS’s very own racing team.
Apart from Hosur, TVS also has its manufacturing units in Mysore and Himachal. TVS Apache is manufactured at the Mysore unit while the Himachal unit deals with the manufacturing of TVS Star, Sports, Tauras and Neo. TVS also has its collaborative units(Land & accessories provided by others) at Kolkata, Brazil and Colombia which acted as assembly units only. It was interesting to note that although TVS Motors was basically a manufacturing company, exporting two and three wheelers to over 50 countries around the world, 95% of parts were actually obtained by external suppliers.
During our visit, we were taken to five major units within the plant where most of the work were carried out. The five units were:
1) Machine Shop
2) Engine Shop
3) Paint Shop
4) Fabrication
5) Vehicle Assembly area
1) [/b]MACHINE SHOP[/b]
This was the unit where the engines parts, provided by other suppliers, were machined. Two types of machining were done: CNC( Computer Numeric Oriented) and SPM( Special Purpose Machining).
CNC was used where ‘n’ number of products were required to be made from a single machine whereas SPM was used where only a particular product could be made from a single machine. These machines came from countries like Taiwan and Germany.
Aluminium was used for making all engine covers which were machined properly to make them air tight and to prevent internal liquids from coming out. These machine covers were then powder coated and sent to the assembly line.
PDI(Pre delivery inspection) was done before delivering products of one department to another to ensure quality standards of highest level.
2) [/b]ENGINE SHOP[/b]
TVS like Bajaj, manufactures different engines for the different bikes which it produces unlike Hero which uses a single engine with varying capacities for different bikes.The engines are assembled and supplied to the plants at Mysore and Himachal.
TVS uses hi-tech robotic arms only at specific parts of the assembly line, thus safeguarding the jobs of many employees and at the same time ensures high quality standards by making its employees and work processes adhere to strict quality standards. Although most of the assembly work was carried out by using human labour, the error rate was only 5 in 100.
There were two kinds of assembly lines: Static and Dynamic. The Static assembly line was used to fit parts that required very high precision. e.g fitting of piston in piston rings. All other parts were assembled using the dynamic assembly line. Dynamic assembly was done prior to static assembly and the rate of both the assembly lines was equal. All equipment required for assembly were put in a bin and sent near the assembly line where they were used for assembly. Time taken for one complete unit to roll off the assembly line was 42 seconds in case of bikes and 22 seconds in case of mopeds. Maximum capacity of production was proportional to the speed of the conveyor belts used in the assembly line.
Every stage had POKIAKO gates for error proofing and clean roof practice was followed to prevent contamination.
There were three assembly lines out of which one was a multi-brand line. Fifteen supervisors were engaged in managing 160 assembly lines in toto.
3) [/b]PAINT SHOP[/b]
Four types of materials were used in the paint shop namely Sheet metal, Aluminium, plastics and frames.
This was one of the most time consuming phases. One fully painted petrol tank was made only in every two and a half hours. Due to this reason the paint shop operated 24*7.
Petrol tanks were cleaned with distilled water and coated with three layers of paint. The base layer was painted using robotic arms while the premiere and top layers were painted using both robotic arms and human labour. After every coat the tanks were pre heated to make them dry.
The stickering on the petrol tanks were manually done by highly skilled employees having a minimum of 5 years of experience in the domain. Lackering was done at the end to give a smooth and shiny finish to the petrol tanks and was one of the costliest processes involved.
4) [/b]FABRICATION[/b]
We could not gather any information about this unit as it was required on our part to be properly dressed to enter the unit.
5) [/b]ASSEMBLY AREA[/b]
After visiting this unit we came to know that around 1200 components go into making of a single bike and 95% of these components were supplied to TVS by over 650 suppliers.
Material procurement group procured from the supplier and after procurement, Vendor quality check was conducted. After the logistics team supply the materials to the assembly area.
120 employees worked per shift in this unit and in case of any error 1 min PTCA( Planned to check act) was done. Performance of these workers was gauged by 100% delivery and quality standards. Each employee on the assembly line had the authority to stall the entire system in case he/she notices any glitch.
The performance standard for the employees were set at 85%.
The Roll down area in the assembly unit had four sectors :
T1 Sector: concerned with general inspection of the bikes by experienced testers.
T2 Sector: Where the bikes were test driven by approved drivers for 250 metres.
T3 Sector: concerned with the emission testing of the bikes
T4 Sector: Concerned with final testing and packaging.
CONCLUSION[/b]
The visit to TVS motors proved to be a very exciting and enriching experience as not only it lent us a behind the scene perspective of the corporate domain but also helped us a lot to better understand the working of many concepts like production management, supply chain management and HR policies and practices.