PLM Drives Collaborative Innovation At M&M

With rising costs resulting in shrinking profit margins for manufacturers, innovation is the mantra they chant to ensure that they stay ahead in this highly competitive environment.

According to Harvard Business Review, a company that cannot outgrow its competitors must out-innovate them. But this innovation does not happen overnight. Besides identifying a culture that drives innovation, you have to employ the right technologies to help foster it.

At last count, Mahindra & Mahindra has managed to sell 45,000 units of its Scorpio SUV in the US markets. This innovation-driven success story utilised a Project Lifecycle Management (PLM) solution from Siemens as the foundation stone.

Ashok Asawale, Sr GM - IT, M&M, in conversation with Biztech2.0, kicks off the discussion by describing the situation that made M&M feel the need for this solution.

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Conceptualising Scorpio Drove Need For PLM

“M&M has traditionally been a manufacturing setup rather than a design setup. Design was considered to be a part of manufacturing support. When we conceptualized Scorpio as a product line, that’s when PLM became a mandatory requirement,” says Asawale.

The customer today is looking for variety, globally benchmarked quality and a cost-effective product. Formalising these different expectations before the product reaches the design stage becomes very critical. This need combined with exponential growth led M&M to feel the need for a solution to manage the lifecycle of product development.

PLM: A Strategic Decision

Now that we have understood the critical need, let’s take a look at how M&M went about selecting a solution to overcome the issues spelt out.

To take a product from the concept level to being ready to be given for manufacture, there are various developments. If all these developments are documented, along with identifying accountability for the various processes involved, the transparency required for decision making and collaboration is provided to all the stakeholders involved. In order to facilitate this process, PLM, as a concept, was introduced at M&M.

“As far as selection of the solution is concerned, it was a strategic decision. We were using CAD solutions from UGS/Siemens, so we went in for the Siemens PLM solution,” Asawale explains.

People Management was the Premier Challenge

Identifying PLM as the solution to their problems was just part of the victory. As in all enterprise software, the implementation was the greater part of the battle.

“All our systems and its architecture were always based on a business requirement of crushing time to market. Thus we modelled our entire solution on how to achieve an engineering release in the shortest time possible,” says Prahalada Rao, GM Projects, M&M.

The first module implemented was an Object Management Framework (OMF). A vehicle is composed of various systems. If each system is looked upon as object, an OMF helps develop workflows to manage and edit it. The second module deployed was Lifecycle Management for all the phases, starting from the concept level till the product is released for manufacturing.

A Bills of Material Object Management Framework, which helps develop a framework for all the bills of materials involved in the manufacturing process was the third module. Other modules deployed were Advanced Product Configurators, which deal with the problem of creating variety while keeping the basic structure the same, and Document Management.

People management turned out to be the premier challenge of this implementation. “To critique any creator is a difficult job. Secondly, getting people to record their observations in the PLM system separately was a difficult task. By sharing this data, identification of bottlenecks and design errors was possible, which did not go down well with some people, who looked at this process as ‘placing the blame’,” says Asawale.

Predictive Design was the Goal

Often it’s tough to quantify the benefits of an enterprise technology implementation. But M&M puts it in the terms they know best: 45,000 units of the Scorpio sold in the highly competitive US market, which the company says is a direct benefit of the PLM implementation. As impressive as that sounds, there’s more.

Initiating any changes after completion of the design equals spiraling costs, so it is imperative that all changes be noticed at the design stage. To ensure this, collaboration is very critical. The visibility that PLM provides brings all the stakeholders together and adds differential value to the product.

PLM has succeeded in bringing all the stakeholders (designers, manufacturers, quality control) together right at the concept stage. Before the PLM implementation these were different departments that worked in a linear fashion, but now they work collaboratively.

Asawale explains design savings in simple terms: “This solution allowed M&M to introduce the Scorpio at a third of the normal design cost.”

PLM also develops a databank, so when M&M introduces new products in the future, there will be a standard data bank available. “If we use this collaborative advantage, future cycle times will drop further. That’s when we get to the level of predictive design, where we can say that M&M will introduce a new vehicle in a fixed time period. Thus the journey from unplanned to predictive design is the major change brought about by PLM,” he says.

“This solution might not be the most technologically superior, but if you look at it from the user or business perspective, it fits into the business requirements bang-on. So there is no difference between what the user expects and the way the system functions. This match is what gives us great business benefit,” adds Rao.

Target: 40 Percent Revenue From Every New Product

An enterprise technology implementation is incomplete without a road map for the future. Here’s what M&M has lined up.

“Prior to the Scorpio, every new vehicle was an edit of the previous version. The Scorpio has created a different platform. Now instead of creating one platform, with the help of PLM we are creating four platforms. Instead of one product, we are creating ten products. Our target is to generate 40 percent revenue from every new product, every year. In a globalised market, that is the direction in which we are moving,” says Asawale.

Within the M&M family, collaboration between the auto and FES sectors is yet another plan for the future.