At the Thunderbird conference room in Dearborn, every Thursday Alan Mulally, CEO and President of Ford Motor Company, conducts his business plan review meetings. It is a less known fact that issues of the Indian subsidiary of the company are often discussed in these meetings. Ford India has been progressing at a decent speed due to the success of its compact car Figo. In the last three years, the American manufacturer's market share has increased from 1.5 per cent to 4.5 percent in India. Ford India expects India to become its third largest market after US and China by the year 2020.
Petrol and diesel vehicles have never been produced in the same manufacturing line in 100 years of the company’s history. Michael Boneham, President and CEO of Ford India said, “When we conceived the engine plant at Chennai in 2008 the dilemma was whether to make petrol engines or diesel ones," He further added, "The signal from the market was unclear. We proposed a flexible plant that would help us switch to either power train depending on demand. It also brought in economies of scale."
Ford Motors have made it compulsory for all new engine production units to have flexible lines. This rule also applies for the Sanand facility located at Gujarat, India. Ford Motors’ assembly line has also been made flexible by Ford India. Each assembly line at Ford's US facilities produced a single product but to keep costs low, Ford India started testing and deploying sensors and robots, so that different models can be identified and assembling or welding process can be performed on the same assembly line.
Six models can be handled at a time at the manufacturing line at the company's Chennai facility. "This step enabled us to build numerous models, both for India and for export, and yet keep our inventory low," says Tom S. Chackalackal, Executive Director - Manufacturing, Ford India. However, the company did not find the process quite convenient as 600 different variants of Ford vehicles are manufactured.
Innovative changes by Ford India propel it to success
Due to sheer glut of components, the activity became more cumbersome, which resulted in production delays. The company then worked on the selection process of automate component. "We worked with Indian IT vendors and came up with a kitting solution which identified parts for each variant," says Chackalackal. He further added, "This reduced defects by 95 per cent." Similarly the 'kitting' has been implemented at Ford's factory in South Africa and will soon be part of the manufacturing process at its other units as well. By the kitting process, identification of components for several variants can be automated easily.
Ford India adopted 3 Wet High Solid Paint Technology in its cars, which is the another achievement of the company. This technology was developed by Ford Motor and was used in one of its Truck lines. During the expansion of the Chennai facility of the company, this technology was adopted by Ford India.
"It reduced our fuel utilisation on the manufacture of each car by 30 per cent," says Boneham. "The process eliminated one baking cycle and reduced emissions by over 20 per cent. It also cut our water consumption sharply." Today, Ford India's water consumption per car is the lowest among Ford's operations worldwide at 1.18 kilolitres and is a benchmark for all other facilities.
Another crucial step for the company was correct pricing of Ford Figo, which made it an affordable car. For this, the company collaborated with suppliers to eliminate the over-engineering expense, while optimally engineering the components simultaneously. Proudly talking about this, John Lonsdale, Vice President, Product Development, Ford India commented "With its success the bill of material of Figo has become the benchmark for any B car that Ford manufactures globally."
