T
ata Motors Limited is India’s largest automobile company, with consolidated revenues of more than USD 27 billion in 2010- 2011. It is the leader in commercial vehicles in each segment, and among the top three in passenger vehicles with winning products in the compact, mid-size car and utility vehicle segments. The company is the world’s fourth largest truck manufacturer, and the world’s third largest bus manufacturer. Established in 1945, Tata Motors’
presence indeed cuts across the length and breadth of India. Over 6.5 million Tata vehicles ply on Indian roads, since the first rolled out in 1954. The company’s manufacturing base in India is spread across Jamshedpur (Jharkhand), Pune (Maharashtra), Lucknow (Uttar Pradesh), Pantnagar (Uttarakhand), Sanand (Gujarat) and Dharwad (Karnataka).
Among these manufacturing sites, Tata Motors Lucknow is one of the youngest production facilities amongst all the Tata Motors locations and was established in 1992 to meet the demand for Commercial Vehicles in the Indian market. The state- of- the- art plant is strongly backed by an Engineering Research Centre and Service set- up to support with latest technology and caters to the complexities of automobile manufacturing. Fully Built Vehicle business, which is one of the fast growing areas of our business, is also established in Lucknow. The plant rolls out commercial vehicles and is specialised in the designing and manufacturing of a range of modern buses which includes Low- floor, Ultra Low- floor, CNG & RE Buses. The Lucknow facility also specialises in manufacturing HCBS (High Capacity Bus System) buses. In light of Company’s aggressive growth plans, they are currently in expansion phase and production at Lucknow would grow many- fold in near future. The expansion shall be in the areas of painting, welding, vehicle assembly & testing and utility services, driven by latest technology.
40 Management Today | April 2012
Design for Manufacture and Assembly (DFMA) A case study of Tata Motors India by SSA Technologies Ltd
Client requirements SSA Techknowlogies (P) Ltd (referred to as SSA Tech) received an enquiry from TATA Motors, Lucknow, for the DFMA training program. According to the mail sent by TATA Motors, they wanted their engineers to start applying the tools and techniques of the DFMA methodology in a more systematic way. TATA Motors wanted to strengthen the fundamental skills of their Production Engineers & Designers on this subject. They had been using some aspect of DFMA, however not in a structured manner, as they did not undergo any training on this subject and the knowledge that they had in this area was only through experience. They also opted to include a module on Design for Serviceability as a part of the training program.
Solution proposed Accordingly, SSA Tech proposed a 2 day training program on Design for Manufacture & Assembly with a module on Design for Serviceability.
About DFMA
DFMA is a technique that integrates Design and Manufacturing aspects of the product at the drawing board stage itself. It uses simple numerical evaluation methods to examine the ease of manufacturing and assembling the product. DFMA is applied in many automobile and ancillary companies during the product development stage to reduce the number of components. It is a systematic methodology that reduces the manufacturing
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