I have always been fascinated by the sight of new cars plying on the roads. But I had never imagined I would get a joyful opportunity to see them manufactured in an assembly line. A recent visit to premium car manufacturer Honda Cars India’s (HCIL) Tapukara (Rajasthan) plant will thus remain forever etched in my memory.
Honda, founded in Japan in 1948 by Soichiro Honda and Takeo Fujisawa, has global presence in six regions with 137 plants spanning 41 countries. It is the largest manufacturer of internal combustion engines in the world and the eighth biggest automobile company globally.
Since 1995, HCIL has set up two manufacturing plants in India at Greater Noida (Uttar Pradesh) and Tapukara (Rajasthan) with a total production capacity of 2.4 lakh per year. The company has invested more than Rs 7,200 crore at its two plants and employs over 10,000. The corporate office is located in Greater Noida and there are three zonal offices primarily for sales and aftersales in Mumbai, Chennai, and Kolkata.
First car plant in Rajasthan
We started our journey to Tapukara plant early morning. The 2.5-hour-long journey from Delhi was pleasant. I woke up to witness blue Mobilios lined up, along with a fleet of Honda’s best-selling model City.
To meet the potential and existing demand, Honda has come up with a second manufacturing facility at Tapukara (District Alwar, Rajasthan) spread over 450 acres.
Incidentally, it is the first car manufacturing plant in Rajasthan.
The plant in Greater Noida was established in 1996 and is spread over 150 acres. Initial capacity was just 15,000 units and over the years it has increased to 1.2 lakh units per annum. The products manufactured at Greater Noida are the Brio, Amaze, CR-V, and Mobilio. “Tapakura is a modern and state-of-the-art manufacturing facility incorporating the best practices of Honda’s plants globally. While the first phase of operations started in 2008 with manufacturing of critical components for car body parts and engine, full-fledged car assembly operations began in February 2014. This plant is one of its kind with fully backward integrated operations,” said Rajiv Wasan, Senior Vice President (Manufacturing) at the Tapukara plant. The products manufactured here are the City, Amaze, and Jazz.
As part of global sourcing, HCIL exports many critical components across various Honda plants globally. China is one of the export destinations.
HCIL’s Tapukara plant has a production capacity of 1.2 lakh units per annum. The plant has the flexibility to manufacture multiple models which help it to adapt quickly to any sales opportunities. In line with the capacity, the facility can produce 1.2 lakh engines annually.
The capacity of the Tapukara plant will be increased to 1.8 lakh/annum by the middle of next year. The Rajasthan facility employs around 5,500. The plant has deployed 100 robots in various functions like assembly frame, weld shop, paint shop, forging, etc.
First, the White Body
Takt Time, derived from the German word Taktzeit, is the average unit production time needed to meet customer demand. In automobile manufacturing, cars are assembled on a line at a certain cycle time, ideally being moved on to the next station within the Takt Time.
At the HCIL’s Tapukara plant, the Takt Time is two minutes. It means that a fully manufactured and tested car rolls out of the assembly line every two minutes.
The Tapukara production facility is a completely backward integrated car manufacturing operations including all functions of forging, aluminium machining, spin casting, mission assembly, powertrain shop, press shop, weld shop, paint shop, plastic moulding, engine assembly, frame assembly, and engine testing facility. The facility has two plants.
A. Engine and Transmission Plant: Involved in Forging, Powertrain, Aluminium Machining, Spin Casting Machine, and Mission Assembly activities.
B. Car Assembly Plant: Involved in Press Shop, Weld Shop, Paint Shop, Injection Moulding and Painting, Assembly Frame, and Vehicle Quality Check activities.
The first visit was to Forging, where we could see dancing robots. Forging is a manufacturing process involving the shaping of metal using localised compressive forces.
Next we stepped into the aluminium department, where one could see lined up huge cylinder blocks weighing 14.2 kg meant for casting, airfilter assembly, die-casting machines, and machining lines.
At the press shop, sheet blanks are converted into body panels and these panels are subsequently welded/assembled in the Weld Shop.
The finished body from the Weld Shop is called White Body which is painted at the Paint Shop and further parts are assembled in the Assembly Frame Shop.
Welder robots are a draw
The excitement begins once you enter the welding zone. You can actually see car skulls lined up. You will be amused to see the robots doing spot welding, metal handling, etc. The Weld Shop has some advanced equipment for speedy operations.
It has basic skill training facility, where workers are trained for manual welding, bolt tightening, welding gun, tip removal, and similar basic activities of the weld shop.
We had to skip the Paint Shop as it required proper dress code.
We spent a lot of time at the Final Assembly as it needs a lot of time to understand the process. One can see a beeline of cars getting ready, with tyres being fixed, engines being placed, doors being bolted on, and fluids being filled. It was a revelation to learn that around 1,500-2,000 auto component parts have to be fitted on every car. There is a VQL (vehicle quality line) for inspection. Till date the company has made investments of Rs 4,396 crore (as on March 31, 2015) at the Tapukara plant. Another Rs 2,842 crore (as on March 31, 2015) has been invested at Greater Noida for a cumulative Rs 7,238 crore (as on March 31, 2015).
Plans are on to invest Rs 380 crore more at Tapukara to ramp up its production capacity to 1.8 lakh cars per annum.
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