{"id":25439,"date":"2017-11-15T21:40:22","date_gmt":"2017-11-16T02:40:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digital.hbs.edu\/platform-rctom\/submission\/the-mahindra-group-driving-towards-indias-digital-automotive-age\/"},"modified":"2017-11-15T21:42:15","modified_gmt":"2017-11-16T02:42:15","slug":"the-mahindra-group-driving-towards-indias-digital-automotive-age","status":"publish","type":"hck-submission","link":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-rctom\/submission\/the-mahindra-group-driving-towards-indias-digital-automotive-age\/","title":{"rendered":"The Mahindra Group: Driving towards India\u2019s Digital Automotive Age"},"content":{"rendered":"

India has emerged as an important global automotive market and offers huge growth potential due to low vehicle penetration and improving economic fundamentals. The sector accounts for 7% of India\u2019s GDP and employs about 19mn people. [1]<\/a><\/p>\n

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Mahindra & Mahindra
\n<\/strong>Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M), part of The Mahindra Group, is one of the largest vehicle manufacturers by production in India. It produces and sells over 500,000 units per year across SUVs, tractors, pickups, commercial vehicles, and motorcycles.<\/p>\n


\nConnected Factories in Industry 4.0: Digitalization of Automotive Manufacturing
\n<\/strong>Over the last decade, several new technologies have disrupted the automotive manufacturing process, none as much as the Industrial Internet of Things (IoT) creating a connected factory environment. IoT-driven manufacturing allows real-time operation by continuously tracking processes and resources.<\/p>\n

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[2]<\/a><\/p>\n

Concerns at M&M
\n<\/strong>M&M has for long enjoyed a prime position in the Indian markets. However, with markets slowing down internationally, global automotive players are seeking new markets, with India a lucrative target. The entrant of global suppliers with deeper pockets, digitally enabled supply chains into a competitive market with a large range of products, for an extremely price sensitive customer, has created a strong pressure on M&M to have a hyper-efficient plant that is also flexible to meet changing customer demands \u2013 providing extreme flexibility with mass production capabilities. However, for Mahindra, moving from a traditional setup to a digitalized supply chain requires not only an empowered top management to execute the vision, but also a significant investment in research and technology.<\/p>\n

There are three key trends that are influencing this transformation at Mahindra:<\/p>\n

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  1. Capacity to capability:<\/strong> Manufacturing flexibility is critical to respond to variable market demand<\/li>\n
  2. New production models:<\/strong> M&M will look to move from a make-to-stock approach to embrace more make-to-order, configure-to-order, and engineer-to-order production models.<\/li>\n
  3. Workforce engagement:<\/strong> People will continue to provide decision-making capabilities to handle increasing operational complexity. These higher levels of collaboration have a critical need to build a seamless man-machine information flow. [3]<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n


    \nM&M Opens the \u2018Factory of the Future\u2019
    \n<\/strong>M&M invested $3Bn to deploy a Connected Factory of the Future in Chakan, Pune, India. Built with a vision of \u201cconnecting the top floor to shop floor<\/em><\/strong>\u201d, the plant is automated with IoT and Cloud technologies and can seamlessly manufacture 40 models using a new generation of systems that enable real-time, automatic interactions among machines and assets.<\/p>\n

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    1. The Connected Engineering framework<\/strong> enables the acquisition of data from all the connected sources:\n