Design of demand pull system

Abstract

Kirloskar Electric Company Limited has been in the Electrical machines business for over 50 years. The Company's core competent product has been the A.C. Rotating Machines, which account for more than seventy percent ofits annual turnover. Committed to Total Electrics ( the product range covers all the electrical machines required for an Industry, like ac motors, dc motors , the ac and dc drives, transformers, ac generators, etc. The difficulty faced in meeting the demand of the medium ac machines (range 50kW to 350kW ) has been the varieties that have to be handled for the low volume of business. Though holding about thirty percent of the Indian market share in this range, the difficulty in increasing the market share has been hampered by tow major factors, delivery delays and production constraints. The volume of market not permitting mass production the Company continuously faces the uphill task of fulfilling customised low volume products. The sure way of moving into the new globalised economy and facing the competition is to restructure the manufacturing system so as to respond to the customers demand. This can be best achieved with the adopting of Demand Pull System. Batch production system has been trying to ensure the customer demand through better utilisation of men and machinery. However, the customer focus is lost due to the loss of timeliness, which is lost due to batching. An attempt has been made to design a frame work for the change of manufacturing system of the ac machines into a demand pull system. The project has been phased into 4 stages. In the first phase, the conceptual phase, emphasis has been made on design of uniform level production system through production smoothing and setting up information system for effective production through Karftran. The- pilot project needs to be implemented for standard cage machines in the case' of ac motors. The project concentrates on the ac motors due to the product varieties that need to be handled. Once a system is derived for the ac motors the applications of the same system to a much more simple and standardised product accelerators would be easy. The project trial is expected to take about 3 months. The project needs to be supported parallelly by detailed design and implementation of training needs of the personnels at various levels. It is perceived that the implementation of the Demand Pull System for ac motors will help improve the response to the customer demands on timely delivery of the right product in the desired quantity, which should boost the Company Objective of customer satisfaction and improve the market share. It is suggested that an accelerated effort in the direction of product standardisation and reduction in delays occurring due to non-value added activities in areas other than manufacturing also needs to be pursued, which has not been attempted in this project.