This page contains a Flash digital edition of a book.
quality improvement


The Challenge The Tata Motors passenger vehicle plant in Pune, India, manufactures the Zest, Bolt, Indica and a variety of other models in multiple variants. In 2011, plant managers and engineers recognized that their six-year-old MES needed an upgrade because it was beginning to show early symptoms of aging. “We were facing


system availability issues stemming from spo- radic server failures,” said Satarupa Roy-Sarkar of Tata Motors, IT. “If these continued or became worse,” he said, “it would prove diffi cult to meet the high availability expecta- tions of its users.” Consistent quality was another initiative the Tata Motors team


team could also help enable a connected enterprise by inte- grating all three plants and standardizing communications, applications, processes and technology. Under normal circumstances, a transition of the magni-


tude required at Pune—including server installations, network redundancies and application switch-overs for six assembly-


The entry to the Tata Motors plant in Pune, India. The automaker produces a wide variety of vehicles in this facility.


wanted to support. They needed an MES with automated, real- time information-sharing capabilities through quality gates. “If a defect is detected, corrective actions need to be taken quickly,” said Roy-Sarkar. “We needed this to happen more quickly with automated alerts and traceable communications.” To improve the speed of interlinked quality related communi- cation, system-based feedback and feed-forward mechanisms were implemented. This would help provide faster actions in order to support the achievement of quality benchmarks. “We realized we needed to have a revamp of the entire MES,” said Jagdish Belwal, chief information offi cer for Tata Motors. “When we went for this upgrade, we also treated it as an opportunity to do business process re-engineering. Besides improving production performance, we wanted to standardize applications, processes and technology with two sister plants, both of which were greenfi elds.” Tata Motors already used FTPC software in its two newer plants. Based on their successes with the state-of-the-art MES, the Tata Motors team decided to change over to FTPC in the Pune plant as well.


By transitioning to the FactoryTalk system, the team knew it could strengthen operational consistencies and provide visibility for decision support within the Pune plant. Plus, the


line shops and 93 functions—would have resulted in a major shutdown. However, the Tata Motors team and its technol- ogy partners decided to overcome this challenge and go live while the plant was running—with little or no downtime and minimal effect on production.


The Solution The 20-plus-member transition team included application


partners from Tata Technologies Limited, IT infrastructure-sup- port providers from Tata Consultancy Services, systems integra- tors from MESTECH Services, and technology experts from Rockwell Automation and the business IT team of Tata Motors. The fi rst step in the planning process was to hear what capabilities were needed in the new MES. To do so, consul- tations were held with all internal stakeholders in the Pune plant—including top managers from engineering, the assem- bly line shops, quality control and overall plant operations. “We soon found out that we had underestimated the amount of customization that the existing MES had under- gone in last six years.”


With that wish list in hand, the team went to work on the MES migration, but they quickly discovered the brownfi eld conversion would be more complicated than expected.


48 — Motorized Vehicle Manufacturing 2016


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92  |  Page 93  |  Page 94  |  Page 95  |  Page 96  |  Page 97  |  Page 98  |  Page 99  |  Page 100  |  Page 101  |  Page 102  |  Page 103  |  Page 104  |  Page 105  |  Page 106  |  Page 107  |  Page 108  |  Page 109  |  Page 110  |  Page 111  |  Page 112  |  Page 113  |  Page 114  |  Page 115  |  Page 116  |  Page 117  |  Page 118  |  Page 119  |  Page 120  |  Page 121  |  Page 122  |  Page 123  |  Page 124  |  Page 125  |  Page 126  |  Page 127  |  Page 128  |  Page 129  |  Page 130  |  Page 131  |  Page 132  |  Page 133  |  Page 134  |  Page 135  |  Page 136  |  Page 137  |  Page 138  |  Page 139  |  Page 140  |  Page 141  |  Page 142  |  Page 143  |  Page 144  |  Page 145  |  Page 146  |  Page 147  |  Page 148  |  Page 149  |  Page 150  |  Page 151  |  Page 152  |  Page 153  |  Page 154  |  Page 155  |  Page 156  |  Page 157  |  Page 158  |  Page 159  |  Page 160  |  Page 161  |  Page 162  |  Page 163  |  Page 164  |  Page 165  |  Page 166  |  Page 167  |  Page 168  |  Page 169  |  Page 170  |  Page 171  |  Page 172  |  Page 173  |  Page 174  |  Page 175  |  Page 176  |  Page 177  |  Page 178  |  Page 179  |  Page 180  |  Page 181  |  Page 182  |  Page 183  |  Page 184  |  Page 185  |  Page 186  |  Page 187  |  Page 188  |  Page 189  |  Page 190  |  Page 191  |  Page 192  |  Page 193  |  Page 194  |  Page 195  |  Page 196  |  Page 197  |  Page 198  |  Page 199  |  Page 200  |  Page 201  |  Page 202  |  Page 203  |  Page 204  |  Page 205  |  Page 206  |  Page 207  |  Page 208  |  Page 209  |  Page 210  |  Page 211  |  Page 212  |  Page 213  |  Page 214  |  Page 215  |  Page 216  |  Page 217  |  Page 218  |  Page 219  |  Page 220  |  Page 221  |  Page 222  |  Page 223  |  Page 224