Bajaj to replicate new plant model overseas

Bajaj Auto has worked out an interesting structure for its Pantnagar plant at Uttarakhand which was commissioned recently. Nearly 75 percent of its requirements are met from the cluster of 16 vendors located a stone’s throw away. This is not all. The company’s investment here is merely Rs 150 crore with its suppliers putting in a little over three times that figure. Barring painting and assembling of the bike (the Platina in this case), everything else is outsourced from the vendors.

Managing director, Rajiv Bajaj told reporters at an impromptu press conference that this model would practically be replicated in the company’s overseas plants earmarked in Indonesia and Nigeria. It is logical to infer that even five vendors from this cluster could meet critical needs of Bajaj Auto in a new country.

For the record, some of the vendors here include Minda Industries, Endurance, Varroc, Lumax etc. All of them worked in tandem with their two-wheeler customer to get operations up and about in 11 months. Needless to add, they will benefit from the presence of other manufacturers like Tata Motors (located nearby) and M& M in Haridwar.

PRODUCTIVE PLANT

As vice-president (engineering), Pradeep Shrivastava told Autocar Professional, “Our objective was to make a totally lean and highly productive plant in terms of manpower, land, building etc. The idea was to focus on simpler products and processes.” The strategy, therefore, was to source multiple components from the same vendor and keep investments in check. The fact that only 25 percent of parts come from outside Uttarakhand shows that Bajaj has done its homework thoroughly. These include sourcing critical engine parts from the mother plant at Waluj.

According to Shrivastava, another feature of the new facility is the presence of a common logistics agency for spares and facilities. This, in a sense, eliminates the flow of needless human traffic into the plant and keeps things in order at one place. This outfit also caters to outbound logistics where special trucks carry out scheduled deliveries within the state (UP included). The future could see more parts of the north and east being serviced from the Uttarakhand facility.

It is Shrivastava’s view that the pursuit of manufacturing excellence should be effortless and people’s mindset ought to be tailored towards meeting this goal. Line engineers at Uttarakhand were trained at Chakan for some months and, in the process, got to know their counterparts well. Production of the Platina is now 50,000 units a month manned by 160 people and this will jump four-fold once annual production touches a million bikes.

There is enough land at the facility to commission another identical structure which means that capacity will never be a constraint here. The Platina was moved out of Waluj to Uttarakhand and there are indications that other volume-driven models could also find their way here. Whether this will eventually lead to a phase-out at Waluj remains to be seen.

MURALI GOPALAN