Maunfacturing in Chennai

The visit to Ford Chennai reinforced themes such as scale, contrast, contradiction and innovation that we have taken away from this insightful trip.

Sitting in traffic in Chennai, surrounded by all sorts of makes and models of automobiles and other various modes of transportation, we can’t help but think of the of irony of what is before us: 'manufacturing in India', with a particular focus on the automobile industry, an industry that contributes 8% of GDP in India.

While Ford Chennai is global in every sense of the word, the Mahindra R&D plant is just one of the many functional arms of the Mahindra Group.

Although both companies face a very competitive and dynamic operating environment, for Mahindra being an ‘Indian Player’ means that they need to deliver a lot more as their operations are all ‘in-house’.

Just entering the complex reminded us of the powerhouse that Ford is. Ford Chennai is one of 65 plants operating in five continents, and the facility is spread over 350 acres with over 4000 employees contributing to its operations. This one plant exports to more than 80 countries – all with different legal requirements!

Words that come to mind while being shown the production (assembly) line at Ford are: efficient, strong, clean, technical, professional, precision, digitised and systems.

There were just so many critical moving parts, some big some small, and if just one these parts failed it would ultimately impact the whole operation.

This blog could be deemed complete without mentioning the insane robotics and cutting-edge automation! Not only is it highly impressive to see in action but it really does result in precision, consistency and efficiency allowing for the Press Shop alone to output 340 parts per hour.

Although It was no surprise, Ford’s commitment to Health & Safety and relentless focus on minimising harm to their employees was not lost on us, and we learnt a lot from the processes that have been set up in that regard. We were also pleased to see a number of sustainability and community outreach programmes including 'driving skills' for life and an 'in-house' blood donor scheme.

Mahindra R&D itself is an Indian-born company located at Mahindra University that specialises in Sports Utility Vehicles (SUV) with a focus on the domestic market.

There are over 2500 engineers at Mahindra, and this visit reinforced the challenges currently being faced in the automobile industry.

The stringent emission standards are taken very seriously and there is a heavy concentration on the fuel economy, specifically alternative fuels. There is also focus on 'anonymous' and 'connected' vehicles.

There are a number of bottlenecks to the innovative thinking Mahindra is known for: e.g. 'infrastructure' challenges - you can have the best ideas in the world but without the infrastructure they just won’t take-off and limited resources for example Lithium availability.

The internal philosophy, called Crusade 2.0, also resonated with us, although the key takeaway from the visit was the message of how to think exponentially: 'How do I digitize something in my space and how do I create value for my customer?'.

The requirement to innovate to stay ahead of all the change is critical to both companies' survival, and while they get there in different ways, exponential (and alternative) thinking and sustainability were their mutual themes.

With the target of achieving 10% efficiency each quarter. Ford is constantly changing its model, correcting mistakes, tracking ideas and continuously improving. In order to leverage change to their advantage and benefit from it, Mahindra R&D is thinking big and has put a number of innovation processes in place to ensure that ideas can be cultivated, supported and built on.