It's a car that has made history. On January 10, while a select few thousand watched the unveiling of the Nano - the People's Car, a million more around the world saw it on the internet or read about it in newspapers the next day; and it continues to make headlines.
A few weeks after the unveiling, however, its business as usual at the Engineering Research Centre (ERC) at the Tata Motors plant in Pune. Here is where it all began and here is where the Nano team, after the euphoric unveiling, is now quietly gearing up for the next phase: putting the Nano on the road.
"The execution of the project is the real challenge", says the self-effacing Girish Wagh, who heads the 500-strong Nano team. "While we are happy and proud at the reception received by the Nano, we also know that we have a long road ahead." This statement sums up the Nano team philosophy.
It was an incredibly tough journey - filled with challenges, questions, detours and self-doubts. But the Nano team developed and delivered a car that exceeded the world's expectations beyond their dreams.
The team, as one, acknowledges the tremendous support and guidance from Mr Ratan Tata, Mr Ravi Kant, Mr Prakash Telang and the senior management. Mr Tata, they say, not only brought a sense of cohesiveness, but also provided a number of vital inputs - information, guidance, encouragement and the motivation to keep looking at innovation.
As we spoke to some of the members of the Nano team, about their 4-year long journey, we sensed the excitement and the pleasure of a job well done; and the never-say-die spirit of the enthusiastic young team as they gear up to face the challenge of launching the car.
But let's start at the beginning
In 2003, a four-member team from Tata Motors was asked to work on a new project. The brief was very fluid. "It began as an advance engineering project. The idea was to try and create a very low cost transportation with four wheels - it was not even defined as a car," says Nikhil A Jadhav, industrial designer, INCAT, who has been working on the project since inception.
| "What was defined was the cost: Rs1 lakh, about $2500 (at the time the smallest car cost around Rs2.5 lakh), without compromising on aesthetics, value to the customer, or safety and environment requirements, says Jai Bolar, senior manager (development), ERC, and a member of the initial team. The project was a Herculean challenge indeed... |
| The road less travelled The design team first looked at alternative ways of constructing a vehicle. Many concepts were explored and inspiration was sought from existing small cars. The team also debated whether doors were necessary, whether plastics could be used instead of metal, whether interiors could be cut to a minimum, whether a low powered engine would suffice. The focus was always the cost factor and so different technologies were tried. But one question was a consistent driving factor: 'What is the bare minimum a customer will accep'." While it was sure that the design could never go down the auto rickshaw route, the team looked at other concepts: a door-less car with a bar as a safety measure, having soft doors in vinyl with plastic windows, a cloth roof, two big doors (instead of four). But all these kept getting turned down by Mr Tata; he was very clear that it had to be a complete car. "In hindsight, after seeing the kind of joy people got by looking at the Nano, we see how important it was to have a complete car," says Mr Jadhav. |
| Body building Various themes were explored which set the styling direction, with inputs from the Institute of Development in Automotive Engineering, Italy. Differently shaped headlights, larger and more vertical, were designed giving the front of the car the appearance of a little kid, with big eyes in a small face. But Mr Tata asked them to try something different. Horizontal rear lamps were tried out before the vertical lamps (much like the Indica) were finalised. While the constant design changes were frustrating, it also added to the interest factor, feels Mr Jadhav. "If you look at the early renderings of the car, it has metamorphosed into something completely different. But we were always kicked with the fact that in spite of the changes, the car never looked ordinary and boxy. The basic shape and size of the car was always very nice, especially after the lamps changed. In fact that was the point when my interest came back from 70 per cent to 100 per cent." A feature of the new Indica - a spine on the bonnet - was added to the Nano and that changed the front volume and the car started looking more interesting. As the team put it, "It was just a smile in the beginning and the spine accentuated that. That was an important point where the car really started looking nicer; not just a plain car or just another car." The overall shape was developed keeping in mind that this car had to feel large; the wheels at the corner accentuate the car and give an interesting graphic on the road. There was an interesting debate on the bottom end of the glass: there was an inclined wedge till the doors and then a step-up at the quarter window which was tied-in with the bonnet line. But the design team kept debating with Mr Tata where the line should be. They thought that the kickup added a lot of character, but he felt that it reduced the length of the car and asked them to extend it along the lines. This made the car look longer. In the last week of July 2007, just when the team thought it had it all together and could begin work on the virtual phase, there was one more hiccup. Mr Tata felt that the nose of the car looked snub; while the team felt that the nose gave the car a sportier look. But they went back and did some renderings to increase the nose; it actually helped increase the length of the car as well as internal volume. The new design was presented to Mr Tata, at the end of August as a virtual model, and immediately received his sign off. "And that's the car you saw in Delhi," concludes Mr Jadhav with a smile. |
The design work on the interiors of the car was even more interesting with maximum scope for innovation. Here again the focus was on cost reduction, but without compromising on the comfort factor. The directive from Mr Tata was that the customer has to perceive value. So there was a constant tussle in balancing value to customer and cost to company.
The styling was focused on comfort and functionality. "The inside volume was quite large and we were always faced with the challenge that with so much space if we reduce things, it will actually look like there are less things. So we tried to integrate functionality in components. It may cost a little more but you are getting two functionalities at the cost of one," says Siva S Aittili, manager (Industrial Design), ERC.
According to him, the exteriors define the character of the car but the interiors drive the user experience. "It's when a person sits inside the car and experiences the comfort and ambience, that he gets the final overall feeling about the car," he explains. So every detail was benchmarked with a luxury or best-in-segment car and the thinking took a different route to manage within the costing.
Working closely with the sourcing team led to many interesting inputs on what was possible and what was not. The driving instrument cluster is uniquely placed in the centre, giving the car an open look and enabling everyone in the car to look at it. It also makes the dashboard equally amenable to left hand and right hand driving. Initially the cluster was a simple circular shape; then Mr Tata suggested the shape be changed to an ellipse like the Tata logo.
There was a lot of exploration in terms of colours. "We looked at harmony in the colours for the dashboard, the door trims and the seats, to give a good feeling to the customers," says Mr Aittili.
The seating also went through a lot of concept changes with the team and Mr Tata looking at furniture catalogues for inspiration. Frames with tensile fabrics were thought of, but were rejected as too expensive. The final choice was a conventional looking seat with a structure made of metal and the headrest integrated with the seat to save on costs.
The team also wanted the wheels to look different but alloy wheels were too expensive. The final design is called stylein- steel wheels - a concept that looks like alloy but is made of pressed steel; and the cost is almost the same as a normal steel wheel. Other interesting and unique concepts include a central exhaust and the scoop (air way) required to cool the engine, which became part of the design, part of the door feature.
Now that the car has been unveiled, Mr Jadhav and Mr Aittili are fine-tuning the details, listening to feedback and working on it. And after that: "We will begin work on taking this to the world in a whole different way"
Girish Wagh, Head, Small Car Project
"Our biggest challenge was to keep the balance between cost and performance. The brief was that the vehicle should be attractive to customers without any compromises on quality and performance. Mr Tata set the internal benchmarks. The company has done a lot of innovations to bring the cost down.
In such a project there are more failures than successes but never at any point did we think that we will fail. Mr Tata was completely involved with the project as was Mr Ravi Kant who was extremely supportive and participative. They were an integral part of the team along with other senior managers. They created an environment in which people never had a fear of failure; in which they had the chance to use their creativity to a maximum. And the team responded magnificently. They were convinced and passionately involved with the project.
The focus was always on taking the project forward. Our suppliers also put in all efforts and were very involved with the project. The next phase is to have the variants of the Nano; there are lots of exciting possibilities in the development of the car."
The heart of the Nano
The original thought was to have a conventional front engine and a front wheel drive. But then the team started thinking differently. Abhay Deshpande, assistant general manager-Vehicle Integration, ERC explains, "Most highend cars have a front engine to reduce the complexity of the controls; but the engine drives the rear wheels. While driving from the rear is a more efficient way of transferring power; driving from the front is more cost effective as you don't have to take the power to the rear. We thought of taking advantage of both by having a rear engine with front wheel drive. It made the car more low-cost, more efficient and more compact (we could manage with a length of almost 3 metres).
The idea of putting the engine in the rear also turned out to be a major turning point in the design process, a breakthrough of sorts. (The engine was designed to fit in the space behind the rear seat).
The sourcing team went shopping worldwide for a suitable small 35hp engine that could be used in a city car, but could not find anything that fit the budget. In a review meeting, Mr Tata asked whether the engine could be built in-house. And that was a task in itself. A rear engine also meant that all controls had to be changed. "The cables that run in front from the engine to the accelerators etc, now have to travel from the back. This makes them more complex,"says Mr Deshpande.
Fitting the engine, the gearbox and the exhaust system into the space behind the rear seats was yet another challenge. The engine is actually inclined at an angle of 14 degrees to complement the rear seat incline. Starting with a 554cc, the team has managed to increase the engine to 624cc with 27hp.
The engineering team is very proud of the many innovations that have gone into the Nano. The weight in the rear of the car meant that vehicle dynamics were affected; this led to using different tyres for the front and the rear. "The ride and handling is quite optimised for the vehicle. We focused on simple designs and tried to incorporate innovations in that," says Narendra Kumar Jain, Dy GM, engines, ERC. A drum brake system and non-collapsible steering were added to the package, and the car in fact has the smallest turning circle.
Manufacturing planning The interesting challenge here was that aiming for a very low cost car meant the entire organisation had to be leaned down - not just manufacturing, but materials, design, human resources, and so on. "Mr Tata gave us valuable inputs here - he suggested that the team look at benchmarking themselves not just against other automobile companies but also against other consumer product companies. As a result, the team has taken the benefit of best practices from other industries such as cycle manufacturing or PC manufacturing that involve mass manufacture and assembly," says Santosh Bannur, senior manager, planning, Passenger Car Business Unit (PCBU).
"Mr Tata would frequently join us and give inputs on styling, manufacturing processes etc. We also took internal benchmarking inputs from our teams in Jamshedpur and Lucknow," adds Atul Vaidya, assistant general manager , planning, PCBU.
The planning team was joined by members from other processes - the paint shop, weld shop, press shop, assembly shop. "Normally, different departments step in at different stages. But in this project manufacturing, planning, maintenance, etc were all involved from the beginning. The entire vehicle was designed and built in a collaborative manner," says Jaydeep M Desai, assistant general manager, Small Car Manufacturing Planning.
Over the months the 120-member manufacturing team was built through a systematic process, through interviews and evaluations. People were taken from within Tata Motors, as well as from outside, graduate trainee engineers from IIT Kharagpur and Jadavpur University. "There was a mix of experience and youthfulness," says Ajay Tiwari, assistant general manager, HR, Small Car Project. "Though the members were from diverse areas, the team worked well together because the overriding objective was the focus for everyone. There was also a huge amount of transparency as the role of each person was clearly defined."
The diversity of the team helped in generating unique and fresh ideas. Since around 30 per cent of the capital investment in an automotive industry goes into the paint shop, the team looked at alternate options. "But we did not want to compromise on any of the five parameters: safety, quality, delivery, cost and morale. Finally we used the pre-treatment and electro-deposition (PTED) process that is used in conventional cars," says Mr Bannur.
In an effort to reduce capital costs, the Nano team discussed options with top Japanese and German paint shop manufacturers. "We have ensured that this will still be the cheapest car as far as the paint shop is concerned. Working with Krug, Germany, one of the best paint shop manufacturers in the world, we have managed to bring down capital costs and variable costs to a great extent. We have also ensured that we keep to the environmental norms in Maharashtra and West Bengal," says Bannur.
Production concerns
Another cost cutting exercise that was attempted was to reduce the number of tools to make the components while at the same time, increasing the life of the dies used, by three times the norm. "It made the design and manufacture of the dies more complicated. We tried special materials and received a lot of help from the product design team in meeting the target," says another production engineer.
Initially Vivek Suhasrabuddhey, divisional manager, Small Car Project Office, was sceptical about meeting the projected cost because ''the car looked like an Indica, with the same volume but the targeted price was a quarter of the cost of the Indica. But then I realised we could do many things." They started with benchmarking all parts and sub assemblies with vehicles ranging from a two-wheeler to a high-end fancy car. They also did an exercise called design for manufacturing and assembling whereby the design efficiency of each of the assemblies was worked out. ''Basically this means determining how many useful parts there are in the design. We involved the suppliers also in this exercise and they realised that some functions could be integrated in parts. That is how we got some cost benefit," he says.
Because the Nano is a rear-engine car, serviceability and accessibility was a big concern. ''We had to make the car more serviceable and accessible from the customer's point of view. So we did some design modifications to allow this," says Nagabhushan R Gubbi, head of engineering, Passenger Cars. An innovative approach, creating a statistical tolerance sheet for critical failures in product design, gives the team critical control parameters.
The car has undergone all required safety testing. "We have done the full frontal crash testing. The offside frontal is required for Europe and will be required in India too. We have completed all simulations etc and are ready. The car also conforms to all environment norms, including Bharat Stage III," says RG Rajhans, project manager, Body Systems Engineering Automation, INCAT.Ravi Kant, MD, Tata Motors
"It was a huge challenge to make the world-s cheapest car. The Nano is not an urban phenomenon but for semi-urban and rural markets too; after decades of paucity of choice, the common man is finally going to have an option. It has been a great collaborative effort of our partners, suppliers and vendors. Emissions are better than two wheelers and the fuel efficiency is 50 miles per gallon. You consume less fuel, pollute less."
Vendor development
This team had a major contribution to make in lowering the cost of the car because majority of the parts were to be outsourced and had to be procured at low cost. The team evaluated and selected vendors who could deliver quality at the required price and then worked with them to ensure that the parts were made to the right critical parameters on the drawings given by ERC.
"There were two primary challenges for us," says Sachin Singh, assistant general manager, Strategic Sourcing Group." The first was to contain the prices, because every time there was a change in design or specification, the cost changed. The second and unique challenge was to convince the vendors about the volumes." Not surprising since talking volumes of two million over five years was not heard of in the four-wheeler industry.
"A major task was to interact with them, to figure out their processes and optimum capacity to which they could deliver," he adds.
E Balasubramoniam, head - Sourcing, small car project, PCBU says, "A lot of engineering has been contributed by our suppliers. We have about 100 vendors, of which 50 will be co-located at the vendor park at Singur. Of these 15-20 would be integrated facilities."
Some of the vendors are from the Tata Group. The TACO group companies include - TACO IPD, Tata Toyo Radiators, Tata Johnson Controls, Tata Visteon, Tata Yazaki, Tata Ficosa, Tata GS Yuasa Batteries. There-s also Tata Ryerson for the steel service centre and roll form sections, Tata Bearings for bearings and Tata Steel Tubes for the engine cradle.
The big task now is to get the plant operational with the 50 vendors setting up their facilities, clearing all the testing and validation, looking at timelines, the production and ramp rate. "In a normal set up, machines are running and processes are established; here the 4Ms of production - man, machine, material and method, are all new. It is like setting up 50 factories," says Mr Balasubramoniam.
The difficulty also lies in the fact that the product and the location are both new. The team is doing its best not to repeat mistakes from the Indica launch. "We are taking definite measures to minimise problems. We have started the early vendor involvement initiative. It is a unique initiative (3P - production, preparation, process methodology) used by Toyota for their supplier base," he adds.
Ramping up
There are some unique things in this project that have happened for the first time in Tata Motors," says Jaydeep M Desai, assistant general manager, Small Car Manufacturing Planning. Quality systems have been thought about, put in place and well documented so implementation becomes easier. The maintenance practices - failure mode analysis and development - have been completed. "We have ensured all this during the planning phase itself and this will reduce the breakdowns when we start," he avers.
With the car now unveiled and appreciated, the team is looking to provide the finishing touches. The four-year journey has a new beginning.
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