Growth through Productivity

Indian Machine Tool Manufacturers’ Association (IMTMA) will be virtually organizing the 14th edition of National Productivity Summit (NPS 2020) on December 18 – 19, 2020. In keeping with the tradition, the event will be highlighting production bottlenecks in the Indian manufacturing and having experts over to point out ways to effectively address them and boost productivity…

National Productivity Summit (NPS) is an annual event that Indian Machine Tool Manufacturers’ Association (IMTMA) organizes with the aim to present best practices in manufacturing and aid the industry improve its productivity.

The summit has been serving as a platform for knowledge sharing, cross-learning, and networking. Through insightful keynotes, live case study presentations, plant visits, success stories, the event asserts the need to embrace an integrated approach to increase manufacturing productivity, and the ways to make it possible with efficient team, processes and technology.

This year, owing to the present circumstances, the event will go digital on December 18 and 19, 2020. The two-day summit will enable delegates to learn more about the various facets of manufacturing competitiveness from prominent industry experts as well as case studies presented by various companies. The thought-provoking sessions will provide participants with an enriched learning experience, enabling companies to enhance their productivity and train their workforce in the latest technologies and processes for productivity excellence.

Dr Gregory H Watson, Chairman, Business Excellence Solution Ltd, Finland and Vipin Sondhi, Managing Director & CEO, Ashok Leyland Ltd, India, will be the keynote speakers.

Treasure trove of knowledge

Leading manufacturing companies such as Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited, Brakes India, Dynamatic-Oldland Aerospace, Faiveley Transport Rail Technologies India, Hero MotoCorp, Indo MIM, Mahindra & Mahindra, Tata Hitachi Construction Machinery, TVS Motor Company, and Yuken India will present their case studies.

The summit will also feature presentations on productivity improvements in the SME sector. Under this, Adler Mediequip and Khutale Engineering will present their case studies and contest for the IMTMA – ACE Micromatic SME Productivity Championship Award 2020. The award acknowledges outstanding efforts from the shortlisted case studies of companies that have excelled in achieving superior performance. They are then rewarded with cash prizes.

Innovative case studies

BHEL: Quantum leap in productivity in gas cutting

BHEL produces fabrication of heavy-duty pipes, and its manufacturing process in-volves Gas/Flame cutting of large pipes followed by edge preparation for welding. The pipes range from 100mm-1400mm diameter, 6-10m length, 5-100mm thickness, and 3-10 tonne weight. Gas cutting and Edge preparation was hitherto being done by turning the pipes manually with crow bars while operating on one quarter of the circumference in each setup. A rotator-based positioner has been implemented for continuously rotating the pipes, so as to improve productivity, safety and ergonomics.

Dynamatic-Oldland Aerospace: 300% ramp up of helicopter kits

Dynamatic-Oldland Aerospace supplies kits of fabricated structural parts for BELL 407 Helicopters. The company had to gear up for a spurt in volumes from BELL and increase capacity from 3 helicopter kits per month to 9 kits per month at a short notice. The resorted approach was advance planning, aggressive pushing for resources and inventory management, use of auto-nesting for optimizing and speeding up cutting of parts, and implementing a number of administrative best practices. Not only did it smoothly ramp up production, but also improved its operational performance and work culture.

Hero MotoCorp: Low-cost Automation and JIT

Cylinder kit line at Hero MotoCorp’s facility at Neemrana produces kits of loose parts for two-wheeler engine cylinders. Owing to increase in demand, it was required to increase the production rate from 8 kits/min to 14 kits/min. It implemented low-cost Automation through addition of conveyors in line with JIT principles. Also implemented was modernization by replacing conventional label sticking on products with automated laser engraving on the fly. Apart from increasing the rate of production, it reduced manpower and realized savings through the improvements.

Mahindra & Mahindra: Improvements in core making

In line with Mahindra & Mahindra Group’s commitment towards adopting Green manufacturing and reducing carbon footprint in its oldest plant, it has identified captive foundry, and within the foundry, Core shop as its priority areas. Two varieties of Cores were merged into one type for optimization of lines and handling. To reduce handling of hot core and improve productivity, it implemented automation and added pneumatic sand transfer system. This resulted in improving productivity of Core shop by 110 percent, improving production capacity of Crankcase castings by 50 percent, in addition to achieving aggressive environmental results. It has also achieved I4.0 compatibility for energy monitoring.

Yuken India: Reengineering of chip compacting machine

Yuken manufactures Chip Compacting machines to help machine shops in user industries to improve productivity in chip handling and enable better realization of scrap value. The Chip Compacting machine has been extensively reengineered for better productivity and operational performance, both for company as well as to offer better value proposition to its customers. The principle benefits were reduction in Die change time and power saving for the customers, and reduction of throughput time, inventory and import substitution for Yuken.

Tata Hitachi Construction Machinery: Use of the latest cermet hobs in gear cutting

Tata Hitachi Construction Machinery manufactures Transmission devices and Gears for its in-house products. It had to scale up volumes by 50 percent, for which it considered options of achieving this with minimal Capex. The original process of gear manufacturing was roughing by hobbing. The company has changed the process where Finish machining is directly done by Cermet hobbing, followed by heat treatment. It can now achieve the required capacity for much lesser Capex and has a verified gear quality with the new process.

Indo MIM: Automation and Robotics

The performance of metal injection molding at Indo MIM was suffering on account of a sluggish process, higher dependence on manual work, low productivity and consistency. The company undertook a drive to implement a slew of improvement measures such as the use of tools with additional cavities, automation in thread unwinding, robots for material handling between machines, automation in de-gating operation and I4.0 based on line productivity monitoring. With this, the company has achieved about 30 percent increase in throughput per machine, and 45 percent increase in throughput per operative.

Faiveley Transport Rail Technologies: Value Stream Mapping in panel manufacturing

Faiveley Transport Rail Technologies is the sole supplier of E70 brake panels for the Indian Railways. In order to address increase in demand, the company had to improve its processes. After a systematic process of VSM (Value Stream Mapping) and application of MOST (Maynard Operation Sequence testing) techniques, a number of improvements were done in the bottleneck area. This included elimination of non-value adding activities, layout changes and work-cell optimization, automation in testing of panels and nut runner improvement. With these improvements, the company was able to double its capacity and attain significant cost savings.

Brakes India: Plating process change

Brakes India was facing major quality issues due to black dots on plated parts, leading to rejections and customer complaints. It tackled the issue by changing the Zinc Barrel Plating process from acidic to alkaline process. A major project was undertaken to modify the Zinc Plating Line with specific efforts to crunch the process cycle time. The company achieved the quality target, improve productivity by 20 percent, avoid significant Capex incurrence, and implemented bar code traceability in line with I4.0

TVS Motor Company: Cobots on the fly inspection

TVS Motor Company was faced with a pressing need to improve quality appeal, coupled with a capacity rise. A final inspection was identified as a vital area for improvement. The company implemented AI-backed, Cobot-maneuvered, digital camera-based ‘in-line’ 100 percent inspection from Left Hand (LH) and Right Hand (RH) sides of the two-wheeler assembly line. Its capacity increased from 1,000 products/shift to 1,800 products/shift with better quality assurance. It also attained the ability to stop the line at the first appearance of any major defect. It is an example of I4.0 implementation for quality.

Adler Medieqip: Low-cost Automation in Rasp teeth punching process

Adler Medieqip manufactures medical implants. When an implant is placed in Femoral hip joint to provide support to the largest load bearing bone in the thigh, the cavity needs to be filed/rasped to match the shape of the implant. This is done with a Trial Rasping tool, with teeth punched on its surface for abrasive action. Teeth were being manually punched on this tool, which hampered the safety, speed and consistency of the process. Besides, the punches used needed frequent re-sharpening and punching, followed by annealing process. A fixture was developed, which positions the Rasp below a fly press for easy and consistent punching. The fixture has an embedded heating coil to combine annealing within the punching process. The capacity could thus be raised from 1-1.5 Rasp/shift to 3-3.5 Rasps/shift.

Khutale Engineering: A Zero Effect Zero Defect journey

Khutale Engineering is the ‘lean’ supplier of sheet and tube parts, and assemblies for the White Goods industry. For an all-round improvement in its operations, the company embarked upon a Zero Effect Zero Defect journey in letter and spirit. It did extensive deployment of 5S, safe practices/conditions, Poka Yoke, conservation measures and addressed productivity issues by the use of Digital Read Out and improvement in fixture, among other measures that led to significant multi-dimensional results.

Poonam Pednekar
Chief Copy Editor
Magic Wand Media Inc
poonam.pednekar@magicwandmedia.in

Source: Magic Wand Media

---

---