The ubiquity of the car as a means of personal transport today is widely attributed to the transition to assembly-line-based, mass production from individual handcrafting by Henry Ford more than a century ago. The standardisation and efficiency gains associated with the move is credited with having made the car affordable to even the workers who made it. Today, ironically, technology is enabling a reverse transition — giving consumers the ability to customise and tailor their car even before it has hit the assembly line. One of the companies looking to tap this ‘white space’ in the market is Tata Motors, India’s No. 3 carmaker and one of its fastest growing.
“Made-to-order is something that will catch up in India eventually. Today, it is perhaps at the level of mass customisation but going forward, it will evolve into the phenomenon of every car being a unique product,” said Mohan Savarkar, Chief Product Officer, Tata Motors Passenger Vehicles, on the sidelines of the launch of Altroz Racer — the high-performance version of Tata Motors’ premium hatchback offering several cosmetic and performance upgrades to entice enthusiast buyers.
The company, which retails seven models — Nexon, Punch, Harrier, Safari, Altroz, Tiago and Tigor — foresees a growing trend for personalisation even in the mass-market category, which typically relies on standardised manufacturing techniques to roll out products in high volumes.
Tata Motors attributes the trend primarily to rising consumer aspirations and a growing population of younger car buyers who want unique products that stand out from the crowd and reflect the individual’s personality.
The role of software
Tata Motors is deploying several technology-led manufacturing, sourcing, and production planning processes to meet growing consumer expectations on product personalisation.
Core to its strategy is ‘Anaplan’, an end-to-end software that integrates its supply chain, sales strategy and production planning activities in line with market demand. The digital solution taps into ground data from the scores of Tata Motors' dealerships across the country that regularly feed customer walk-in, inquiries, and order placement (booking) data into the system and translates this data into usable insights for the company to plan its production.
“Instead of having a rigid Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) plan, we have one that is revisited multiple times a month, and that feeds into the Material Requirement Planning (MRP), as well as the Manufacturing Engineering System (MES) that takes care of pulling in the desired parts from vendors, and scheduling cars on the assembly line,” said Savarkar. “All this is choreographed in a way that allows us to meet customer requirements. We also measure ourselves on how well we met monthly demand by achieving a fine balance, and neither overproducing nor underproducing any model. We have been able to implement it very well,” he pointed out.
Made-to-order versus made-to-stock
The company has adopted a unique ‘persona’ strategy to differentiate various trims within a single model by clubbing features that would appeal to a certain set of customers. It categorises cars under two sets — made-tostock and made-to-order. For instance, while a whitecoloured Tata Nexon 1.5-litre diesel manual XM variant would typically fall under the first category, a Tata Harrier with a ‘Sunlit Yellow’ colour would fall into the latter, and according to Savarkar, the company would fulfil such an order within a maximum lead time of around 30 days by leveraging its strong digital systems.
Moreover, Tata Motors also enforces rigorous operator training, traceability, and fool-proofing mechanisms on the assembly line, so that despite the growing customisation in models, the correct parts are fitted as per the vehicle’s trim and options.
“Each person is trained to undertake at least three operations, and there are around three or four associates for each operation. Therefore, such level of flexibility is maintained on the line. Moreover, wherever there is too much complexity, there are systems such as sequencesupply and pick-to-light installed on the assembly line to ensure minimum difficulty for the operator searching for the right part,” Savarkar explained.
The company says that by leveraging several digital tools and feedback systems on the line, it has improved its production efficiency by 15-20% over the years and is geared to serve more diverse customer requirements going forward when it comes to customisation of products.
This feature was first published in Autocar Professional's July 1, 2024 issue.