Mr. Ratan Tata, envisioned a passenger car that was affordable by the Indian middle-class families and hence said TATA Motors will launch a car priced at INR 1,00,000.00/-. His statement became the headline of almost all the newspapers and news channels.
Initially the plant was planned and all set to open
in Singur in the communal state of West Bengal. The part of the country was
chosen for majorly two reasons: Close to the Jamshedpur, where the other facilities
of TATA are located and because the Chairman Mr. Ratan Tata felt that this part
of the country is deprived of industries and the government wanted to bring the
industries back and hence, he convinced the board to set up the plant in Singur.
The land that was allocated by the government to TATA Motors, was a disputed
land and from the time the work of erection of the plant started, there had
been constant violence in the region. The parts and components were being
stolen, walls being broken and so on. “The decision to close the plant was a
very painful decision” – Mr. Ravi Kant (Vice Chairman – TATA Motors).
Hence, the company decided to move the entire
project to the friendly state of Gujarat and set up the manufacturing facility
in Sanad. Paint shops having automated robots is one of the cost centers of any
automobile manufacturing unit, and they were already set up in the Singur
plant. TATA Motors had to shift the entire assembly to Gujarat and had to do it
fast, because the cheapest car on the Indian Roads was already promised to the people
of India by the company Chairman himself.
TATA Motors divided the project into three parts;
namely: Setting up of a new unit in Gujarat; Dismantling the already set up
unit in Singur the $300 Million factory and third make some interim arrangement
for production of some cars, as the company was dealing with around 200,000 pre-orders.
The logistics team of TATA Motors, shifted the
entire project across the width of the country within a record time travelling
a distance of more than 2200kms. The journey was not easy. It included large vehicles
and trucks passing through narrow lanes at many places on the way and the
weather didn’t support as well. This article discusses about how the transition
happened.
It took the factory head Mr. Ramesh Vishwakarma
around 3400 truckloads to shift the entire factory from the East to the West of
the country. He had to meet the deadlines and one single road accident could
derail the entire project. The company ensured that each and every part that was
being dismantled was being kept and a BOM was being maintained. Also, the
sequence of dismantling was also documented. This will help the engineers to
assemble the parts faster and with greater efficiency.
The same set of engineers along with engineers
from OEM, who dismantled the plant in Singur were allocated for the assembling
and erection of the plant in Sanand. This reduced the time and ambiguity in the
erection process. The process TATA Motors followed was that they started by
dismantling one department and transporting it. Once reached at the destination,
the engineers started to assemble the plant. Parallely, in WB, another team of
engineers was dismantling another department and was transporting that as soon
as the truck load was achieved.
Another major speed bump on the road was,
absence of skilled labor in Gujrat, for which TATA had to set up a training
center and took in apprentice trainees who were aged 18 years or above. They were
trained on how to paint, to tighten bolts to proper tension and at any angle,
to pick up and place the objects in their designated place and so on. The training
process had started when the plant was in its erection phase itself, this
reduced the time required to roll out the first NANO from the Gujrat Plant. But
the engineers, made it happen and logistics played an integral role in the BIGGEST
EVER RELOCTION!!!
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