Bharat Bijlee

In 2016, Bharat Bijlee witnessed an increase in production volume by 7%, with a reduction in working raw material and WIP inventory by 15%. This was possible mainly due to the continuous process  and  flow improvement  on  the shop  floor, resulting  in significant productivity  improvements; standardisation, cost  effective  designs  and   effective  interface  between  the operations  and design  team  for  quick   implementation  of  new developments and  addressing market  specific  needs; covering  most  of  the  vendors  through  a vendor  portal  to  align  supplies  more  frequently  and   tune  up  to  daily  fluctuations  of  market  consumption; system improvements throughout the supply chain for better visibility; and continuous management focus for improvement in availability, reliability and reduction in lead time.

For  2017, the company has initiated  projects  for further  reduction in assembly  lead time by  exploiting critical resources and eliminating non-value adding activities by revalidating  the complete  production  cycle  with the MOST  technique (Maynard Operation Sequencing Technique). “With preliminary working, we are confident to enhance current assembly capacity by at least 20%. We will also be using Statistical Process Control (SPC) tools to improve the FPY (First Pass Yield) on assembly lines,” says Vakharia.

More  effective  customer  interaction has been planned by  setting  up  back  offices  in  branches,  and  cross functional teams are at work to improve the end-to-end cycle time, in line with customer  expectations.