Introduction

Mahindra Group is a diverse conglomerate with headquarters in Mumbai, India. Its

businesses span across several sectors, including automotive, aerospace, agribusiness,
hospitality, financial services, information technology, technology services, renewable
energy, logistics, and real estate. The company's primary mission is to empower people to
"Rise," which serves as the guiding principle for all of its subsidiary companies. This
philosophy motivates Mahindra employees to aim for success and rise to the challenge,
creating a fulfilling future for themselves and the world.
Mahindra is a leading manufacturer and seller of light and heavy commercial vehicles, last-
mile mobility vehicles, and utility vehicles in the automotive sector. It has been a major
player in India's utility vehicle market, holding a market share of around 50%. The company
has a global presence and operates in various countries, such as India, the United States,
Australia, and South Africa.
Automotive Division - Kandivli Engine, Kandivli Transmission, Zahirabad Transmission, ,
Chakan Engine, Chakan Transmission, Igatpuri Plant
Mahindra & Mahindra Plant at Nashik
Core Focus: People, Passion, and Performance

Important Factors considered for plant:

1. Vendor Selection
2. Technology Selection
3. Logistic Selection (5-10% of the total cost would be for logistics)
4. Procurement Strategy
5. Dealer Network

Two delivery methods are used:

1. Free Delivery (Materials are brought right up to the plant)
2. EXW (Ex-works) Mahindra Logistics takes care of getting products to the plant
Quality checks happen at various stages to ensure quality delivery.

Operations at Nashik Plant:

 The foundry for the Nashik plant is located in Kandivali.
 Engine Note is maintained to cross-check if any improvement is needed.
 APQP (Advanced Product Quality Planning) has been incorporated to produce a
quality product to support product development. 
 They follow the Milk Run model for collecting small quantities of raw material.
 The inventory is updated and replenished periodically.
 ANDON system is installed at strategic positions for emergencies so that the
assembly line can be stopped and corrective actions can be taken. 
 Final engines are mounted at the end of the line. Once the machine is mounted and the
quality check is completed, an overhead crane lifts the unit to the TCF Shop.
 Bodies from the paint shop and chassis from chassis assembly line are received at
TCF Shop with overhead cranes.
 The crane's movement is scheduled such that the body of a car and chassis are in
tandem.
 The workers are needed to follow TAKT time for each activity.
  Two bin system for storage of material is followed. The seats, steering wheels, and
other accessories are mounted on the same assembly line. 
 Quality checks are followed after this.

Output from Nashik Plant:

Manufacturing Lead Time: 6 mins
Cars produced in a shift- 240 units
Maximum cars produced a day: 800 units/ day

These details about the Nashik plant are from 2013/15.

Nashik Plant - Process flow

Issues identified and methodology

1. Planning and constructing the new Chakan plant

Issue - Mahindra Group established a new manufacturing plant in Chakan to expand

its product line, which included medium and heavy commercial vehicles. However,
the company faced challenges during construction, particularly with managing plant
layout data. These included the lack of a standardized layout method, decentralized
drawings, no revision management system, and inefficient file management. These
issues caused delays and impaired visualization performance.

Methodology - Mahindra Group utilized FactoryCAD to address this challenge in the

Chakan plant by utilizing FactoryCAD to develop 3-Dimensional plant layouts for
every production line including body and trim, chassis, and final production. Factory
resources were represented by smart objects, which enabled the creation of layouts
faster and more efficiently by simply snapping the objects together instead of drawing
 each individual piece of equipment. Before constructing and commissioning the
factory, several potential issues were identified and resolved to ensure smooth
functioning. These issues included interference caused by the monorail system's
supporting beams, interference between utility equipment and the civil structure, and
interference caused by a robot to the building column.

2. Cutting short the vehicle development lead time to enable fast movement of
vehicles to market

Issue 2.1 - Mahindra Group encountered a challenge in integrating the body-in-white

(BIW) welding shop, paint line, and TCF assembly line for the production of
Maxximo, Genio, and XUV vehicle models. Although the BIW lines were separate for
each vehicle model, they needed to be connected to a single paint line, resulting in
three distinct TCF assembly lines.

Issue 2.2 - To find the most efficient route for painted vehicle bodies to travel from
the paint line to the three TCF assembly lines.

Methodology
Mahindra employs several software solutions from the Teamcenter and Tecnomatix
portfolios for their production planning, plant design and optimization, and assembly
planning and validation. These include FactoryCAD, Manufacturing Process Planner,
FactoryFLOW, Plant Simulation, Process Simulate, Process Designer, and Jack
software.

Methodology 2.1 - Tecnomatix Plant Simulation was used by Mahindra's Chakan

plant to perform a "what-if" simulation aimed at determining the most effective buffer
storage capacity between production lines. The objective was to identify the best
scenarios for the plant's inter-shop conveyor system by testing several mixed-model
production volumes and determining the ideal sizes for both the central painted body
buffer storage and individual BIW shop storage. The project resulted in Mahindra
being able to considerably decrease the time needed to design the storage.

Methodology 2.2 - By utilizing the simulation, the team was able to identify and
confirm the effectiveness of proposed solutions and potential issues. Initially, a
unidirectional flow without crossovers was considered, but the simulation uncovered
that if one of the TCF lines ceased operation, congestion in the primary line would
occur. The second option, a bidirectional flow with a crossover for empty skids, was
deemed more dependable because each TCF feeder line operated independently of the
others, resulting in minimal impact on line efficiency if one line was down.

3. Identifying the potential issues and optimizing the assembly line for maximum
efficiency

Issue - After evaluating the assembly processes at the new assembly shop, Mahindra
Group found that leaving the doors of the Maxximo mini-trucks painted body open
 during some operations could potentially reduce production time, despite the original
design of the hanger system to move the body with doors closed.

Methodology - Mahindra Group engineers utilized Process Simulate to reduce

production time by confirming that the hanger design could accommodate the
required door opening without physical parts. They conducted a 3D simulation to
determine the optimal extent to which the doors could be opened, resulting in time
and cost savings while reducing the need for multiple design iterations.

4. MBOM inclusion ensures that no component is missed during the manufacturing

process
Issue - Mahindra employed Teamcenter's engineering bill of materials (EBOM) to
handle parts. It generated the manufacturing bill of materials (MBOM) with
Manufacturing Process Planner, which was then sent to SAP for use in production. In
the past, Excel spreadsheets were used for planning, but they were impractical for
managing large bills of materials and sharing engineering data. The MBOM contains
parts in their final form during production and MBOM-specific details, such as the
scrap weight for recycling stamped parts.

Methodology 4 - Mahindra created a comprehensive process for generating and

revising the manufacturing bill of materials (MBOM) using the Manufacturing
Process Planner. The process involved adjusting the engineering bill of materials
(EBOM) and adding product information, such as the point of consumption during the
production line and 'make or buy' definitions. Notifications from the EBOM were
directed to a shared pool and assigned to the MBOM planner, who employed a
controlled configuration incremental change mechanism to enact subsequent MBOM
changes. This guaranteed that each alteration underwent a rigorous approval
sequence, and the impact of any EBOM adjustments on the MBOM was assessed
using Teamcenter's workflow mechanism.

5. Lowering costs by enabling re-using the tools

Methodology – Mahindra planned to streamline the management of production tools

using Teamcenter's resource classification feature to reduce costs, improve quality,
and shorten lead times. They established tool categories and created a library of new
and existing tools classified accordingly. Manufacturing Process Planner was used to
define assembly operations, link them to specific parts and tools, and create a Bill of
Process (BOP). This approach allowed for the reuse of best practices, captured
knowledge, and reduced costs, improved quality, and decreased lead time.

Analysis
Mahindra has implemented concurrent engineering using digital manufacturing tools from
Siemens PLM Software to reduce the duration of vehicle manufacturing projects. The
manufacturing engineering group now prepares for the virtual validation gate using
Tecnomatix tools, which were previously handled only by the product design group. Plant
Simulation has been used to analyze factory layouts and installation processes, ensuring
process validation and reducing bottlenecks. MBOM accuracy is maintained through daily
updates using Teamcenter, with synchronization to SAP based on make or buy attributes.
Digital manufacturing tools play a significant role in defining new or modified production
lines, providing comprehensive engineering information to system suppliers, reducing lead
time, and enabling interaction between production facilities, tool suppliers, and the system.

Issue 6: 
Global competitors with deep pockets entering Indian markets and offering Indian consumers
a large variety of products at highly competitive pricing, created pressure on M&M to have
highly efficient plants and flexible plants to meet customer demand.

Solution:
3 key trends at core of this transformation:
 In order to meet changing market demand, manufacturing flexibility is essential.
 New production models: M&M plans to adopt more make-to-order, configure-to-
order, and engineer-to-order production models in place of its current make-to-stock
strategy.
 Engagement of the workforce: Workers can still make decisions to address growing
operational complexity.

The Start:
For this Chakran project, Mahindra was able to rethink its processes as this was a greenfield
project and they kept agility and flexibility as the core of the design. Rapid changes in
customer demand, technology, equipment, and procedures required the factory to adapt. The
factory had to function in a dynamic, integrated, mobile, real-time networked environment as
a result of this. The support for shop floor connectivity and collaboration, logistics, asset and
supply chain tracking, operations workflow automation, unified communications, control
system flexibility, security, personnel tracking, and integrated business and plant data were
included.
The key objective was to be able to answer questions such as: “Can I produce the demand-
driven quantities with quality to satisfy customer promised dates?” To answer this
question would require information and data to be brought together from across all the shops
in the plant from production to maintenance to supply chain. This includes order
management data, production scheduling, maintenance schedule, quality rates, and
supplier information.
Implementation
The company implemented digital manufacturing tools and high level- IT architecture for the
plant. These 2 approaches were developed simultaneously. 
The team developed a detailed “High Level Design Document” to connect the "top floor to
shop floor" based on the actual detailed business processes and requirements with an
inventory of all the information and data to be shared in real time between all shops and
enterprise resource planning (ERP) layer.

Suppliers and Applications

The manufacturing execution system is the factory of the future running multiple applications
within it, some of them being order management and build sheet, shop tracking, Andon
Boards, poka yoke (error proofing), genealogy and traceability, ERP backflush, line stops,
JIT/eKanban, reports and dashboards, asset management and interface to other systems
(ASRS). 
ANDON displays are located throughout the factory to provide real-time updates on current
production performance and also indicate to management and maintenance staff where an
issue could be.
ANDON Board Display

Digital technology was the key enabler of this newly adopted design. The development of the
assembly plant to digitally simulate the manufacturing process with “What If” scenarios and
alternative thinking for optimal, frugal facilities, tools and equipment procurement, as well as
proactive clearance and interference analysis. These range from virtual factory design,
process validation, capacity planning, robotic integration, virtual commissioning, and buffer
sizing. 

Digital Manufacturing
Wireless technology has been used in real-time production (within the control loop) for frame
and chassis carriers and coordinated union in the final assembly area. Wireless controls were
deployed for conveyor controls and automated storage-retrieval systems (ASRS) stacker
operations.

Advantages of this system:

 Reduction in downtime due to early fault detection.
 Lower defect rates
 Centralized reporting for improved measurability.

Strategic Recommendations:
 Transformation needs to be attained at scale: These “Factories of the Future” need to
be should be prototypes for plants as the inclusion of these technologies in existing
plants will be a challenge. 
They will have to build IoT solutions that can be implemented in the existing
processes. They should not concentrate solely on flexibility in processes to include
new products, but also on the inclusion of existing products in new supply chain
models.
 The company can implement machine data with performance analytics to implement
better maintenance of existing production lines.
Conclusions
In the last few decades technological advancements have proved to be major disruptors in
automotive manufacturing process, like IoT creating connected and integrated factory
processes. This enabled companies to have real-time operations by constant tracking.

https://resources.sw.siemens.com/en-US/case-study-mahindra-vehicles
Designing and Implementing the Factory of the Future at Mahindra Vehicle Manufacturers.
(cisco.com)
H2304036468.pdf (iosrjournals.org)
https://d3.harvard.edu/platform-rctom/submission/the-mahindra-group-driving-towards-
indias-digital-automotive-age/