After visiting the thyssenKrupp plant in Pune a few weeks back, the Mumbai Jags, on the 9th of November, witnessed the workings of another plant on the other end of the manufacturing spectrum – the Mahindra and Mahindra plant. Here, they got to see a mass production plant in action.
Upon arriving at Kandivali, everybody was ushered into the plant’s conference room – the fulcrum, to watch a presentation and to prep for the visit to the manufacturing units.
The Kandivali plant is Mahindra and Mahindra’s oldest, with a history of over 20 years. As a result, it is an amalgamation of the old and the new. Old and sturdy machines beside new sparkling ones and aged structures melding into new constructions. The plant was an exciting study in not only the most modern production management methods, but also on how a plant evolves over time, adopting new practices and reinventing itself.
The class split itself into two groups, each visiting the plants in turn. As a consequence, the Jags saw physically, a lot of what they had been studying in class so far. The assembly line was perhaps the most interesting part of the visit, with different parts all coming together to form the recognizable form of a motor vehicle. The walls of the assembly line were covered in different metrics from productivity charts, to strategy maps and even graphs tracking the frequency of defects.
The visit and sneak peek into the hectic, fast-paced world of automotive manufacturing was both educational and engaging.