Making Excellence a Habit

Mahle Behr India Pvt Ltd is among the leading manufacturers and suppliers of thermal management systems for passenger and commercial vehicles. With a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility at Chakan, Pune, Mahle Behr India designs and manufactures HVAC modules, Engine cooling modules, Visco fan drive systems and EGR coolers for new generation automobiles.

Disrupt to innovate

With uncertainties in the business scenario and ever-changing customer demands, a need to become more efficient in the way operations were being carried out was felt. The need was acute particularly with respect to the flexibility in catering to customer demands; maintaining and increasing productivity levels despite volume fluctuations; and improving floor space  utilization over the life of the product.

The team, encouraged and supported by the top management, took up the challenge to bring about a disruption in the traditional way of designing and setting up an HVAC line, which would become a model of excellence for future at Mahle Behr.

With the increasing focus from Global OEMs to set up their facilities or increase their scale of operations in India, in line with the ‘Make in India’ initiative, implementing this breakthrough not only helped Mahle Behr, but also, in some or the other way, the overall auto sector.

Resorting to new measures

A review of the existing way of operations in HVAC assembly lines revealed:

A traditional method of having customer-specific lines.

Batch type production being followed for different variants on the assembly line.

More of fixed man-machine-material type of layouts.

Looking at future business prospects, with the addition of new customers and constraints on expansion, utilization of available floor space was bound to become the most crucial factor. Hence, in addition to traditional indices like human productivity, in-process inventory reduction, etc., the team created new measures of efficiency like units produced per sq mt of area occupied by the line.

Evolution of the breakthrough

V Map (Visual Map) was used as a scientific tool to understand the current scenario with respect to line balancing, human efficiency, man and material flow within the cell, non-value added activities including walking with or without parts, etc.

A future state map was made with improvement activities to overcome the issues identified in the current state map. Different proposals in reference to layout were made and evaluated on indices such as floor space, flow, flexibility, ease of material feeding and, needless to say, productivity.

Although significant improvement was visible on each of these parameters, the team was not satisfied as the objective was to create a breakthrough. The members, being skilled in application of 3 Gear Innovation techniques, decided to look at and learn from similar and dissimilar industries. The significant finding was that the man moves in most scenarios – in supermarkets he moves along with the trolley for picking up the required items, in thali restaurants he moves along with his plate to serve himself. It’s only in the industrial sector, traditionally, that the man is kept stationary at the machine / workstation, which in some or the other way tends to make him less active with boredom creeping in as the shift progresses.

Prototyping

The concept was prototyped with a Lego game with two scenarios: the first one with five persons stationed at five stages and the material moving between them after the completion of activities at respective workstations, and second one with one person moving along with the material through all the five stages completing the defined activities at each stage.

The results of the second scenario showed significant improvement in line balancing, human efficiency and productivity in terms of units produced with no in-process inventory as the same person is completing all the processes.

It was thus decided to devise a unique concept of moving fixture wherein the operator would move along with the fixture picking up parts placed on both sides and complete the entire HVAC unit. While designing the fixture, the team managed to combine seven different assembly fixtures used at different workstations into one single fixture which could be used for the assembly of both RHD and LHD HVAC variants with a set-up time of less than one minute.

Key aspects like the direction of man and material flow, tool arrangements to be on right hand side for better control and precision work, and the material arrangement with visual controls were also considered.

Environmental aspects were also paid heed to during setting up of the line through the use of LED lights and line documents displayed in soft versions (partially implemented), reduction in the use of compressed air, etc.

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