Case Study 5 Ace Designers

IMB 595
ACE DESIGNERS – COMPETING THROUGH

PROCESS IMPROVEMENT
HARITHA SARANGA, RUPALI KAUL AND ANAND KRISHNAN
Haritha Saranga, Professor of Production & Operations Management, Rupali Kaul and Anand Krishnan, prepared this case for
class discussion. This case is not intended to serve as an endorsement, source of primary data, or to show effective or inefficient
handling of decision or business processes.
Copyright © 2016 by the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore. No part of the publication may be reproduced or transmitted
in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (including internet) – without the
permission of Indian Institute of Management Bangalore.
This document is authorized for use only in Dr. Sarita Prasad's IBP Saritha Prasad at Gitam University from Dec 2023 to Jun 2024.
Ace Designers – Competing through Process Improvement
INTRODUCTION
It was an exceedingly hot March evening and Rupali was lost in thought on her way back to the campus
from a long discussion with R. Prabhakar,1 the COO & Head of the HVM (high volume machines)
business at Ace Designers, Bangalore. Rupali Kaul and her teammates, final year MBA students at the
Indian Institute of Management Bangalore, were doing a process improvement project at Ace Designers,
the leading machine tools (turning machines) manufacturing company in India. Rupali remembered how
Prabhakar looked at her and asked at the end of that day’s meeting, in his usual paternal way, “Well, we
have opened the doors of this plant and the Jobber LM Elite assembly line for you guys to study. I am
sure our workers and engineers have put up with all your interruptions and answered your queries
patiently…” He then smiled warmly and added “We are all excited to hear your recommendations, don’t
disappoint us now”.
Jobber LM Elite (Exhibit 1) was one of Ace Designers’ flagship Computer Numerical Control (CNC)
turning lathes. In the last five years, competition in the industry had increased dramatically, many foreign
as well as domestic players had entered the Indian machine tool industry and a price war was on the
horizon. Prabhakar had decided to implement a radical change, internally referred to as Half-Day
Indexing, in LM Elite’s assembly line, which was aimed at doubling the productivity of the line, thereby
reducing costs. Prabhakar chose a young engineer named Veerendra Macha to lead the half-day indexing
project and after almost a year of hard work and analysis, Macha had successfully implemented the
project. The machine tool industry was becoming more and more commoditized and the pressures on
price reduction were becoming immense; so Prabhakar was planning to implement half-day indexing in
all the other product lines. The project report would identify all the residual issues in the new system
before transferring it to other lines and hence it was extremely important for Prabhakar.
Rupali looked at her coffee powered teammates listening to war music on their headphones and furiously
researching about process improvement on their smartphones. As the vehicle entered IIMB campus, she
sighed heavily and muttered to herself “It’s going to be another long week of slogging!”
THE MACHINE TOOL INDUSTRY IN INDIA
According to the survey conducted by Gartner Business Media, India ranked 14th globally on the scale of
production of machine tools and 10th in the consumption of machine tools.2 With the focus of the Indian
government on indigenous production and the launch of the “Make in India” initiative, India was poised
to become a major competitor in the global machine tools industry in 2016 (Exhibit 2). This positive
business sentiment was also attracting many foreign machine tools manufacturers from countries such as
Taiwan to set up their shops in India. Some 64 small domestic players had also sprung up during the
previous couple of years, and they had been nibbling away at the market share of bigger players by
competing over cost, and their share constituted about 38% of the domestic production.
1
Prabhakar currently holds the Chief Operating Officer position at Ace Designers.
2
http://www.gardnerweb.com/cdn/cms/GR-2015-WMTS.pdf
Page 2 of 17
ACE DESIGNERS AND THE ACE MICROMATIC GROUP
Three machine tool designers Shrinivas G. Shirgurkar, Benedict Machado and A.V. Sathe founded Ace
Designers in 1979 as a design-consulting firm. Armed with 35 years of experience at the Central
Manufacturing Technology Institute (CMTI), a government-funded research and development institute
focused on manufacturing technology and machine tool design, they conceived the idea of Ace Designers,
as a design-consulting firm for manufacturing firms in India. In 2016, the group of companies under the
Ace umbrella, the Ace Micromatic group (Exhibit 3) based out of Bangalore, was the largest
manufacturer of CNC lathes (turning machines) in India. The company had also established a presence in
the global markets for machine tools including the United States, Europe, South America, Middle East,
United Kingdom, China, Japan, South Eastern Asia, and Australia.
ACE DESIGNERS’ PROCESS IMPROVEMENT JOURNEY
In the early 1990s, Chairman Ashok Sathe and the two MDs Shrinivas Shirgurkar and Benedict Machado
decided that Ace Designers would compete based on volume, that is, Ace Designers would manufacture
standardized machines which were aggressively priced. This meant a conscious drop in profit margins
and a fierce pursuit of cost reduction. Ace therefore transformed the assembly of their machines from a
job shop into flow-line during 1998-2002, in an attempt to reduce costs and increase volumes to meet the
demand for a standard machine tool, called the Jobber. In the job shop environment, the Jobber machines
would sit on the floor and all assembly activities were carried out right there. The flow-line
implementation required the machine to move physically from one station to the next (on similar lines of
Automotive Assembly Lines). The activities performed in all stations were sequenced and the material
flow was mapped out accordingly. This improved the assembly line process efficiency immensely. Ace
next went for 5S3 implementation during 2004-2008 to achieve business excellence through adoption of
international standards.4. 5S permeated through all parts of the plant including the offices where the files
were sorted in terms of frequency of usage to reduce access time; 5S also featured in most parts of the
shop floor. Prabhakar proudly shared with the team, how as a direct outcome of implementing 5S
principles, Ace Designers saved over $75000 and received the ‘5S Excellence Award5’ in 2006, 2008 and
2011.
Half-Day Indexing
By the end of 2005, flow-line had been implemented in almost all the product lines and the lines were
capable of producing one machine per day, that is, the cycle time had been reduced to 8 hours. Ace
Designers was able to manufacture and deliver products much faster with better quality than all of its
competition. After seeing the success of flow-line implementation, Shirgurkar was still not content. He
knew that cost was the key lever determining the success of the Jobber and hence wanted to capture this
market by being cost competitive. In 2005, he threw down a gauntlet to his employees once more and
3
Hirano, H. and Talbot, B., 1995. 5 Pillars of the Visual Workplace: The Sourcebook for 5S Implementation. Productivity PR Inc.
4
The integration of the 5Ss (Sort, Set in Order, Shine, Standardize & Sustain) was conceived out of the Japanese Just in Time (seiri, seiton, seiso,
seiketsu, & shitsuke) implementation. 5S aims to remove wastage in terms of time and space.
5
http://acedesigners.com/overview/awards-and-accolades
Page 3 of 17
asked them to halve the cycle time. This was the genesis of the idea of half-day indexing. As Prabhakar
explained to the team, “Indexing in assembly line language is the act of moving the line forward by one
position and half-day indexing means moving the line once every 4 hours”. This ambitious vision sought
to double the productivity of the line, but it just remained a dream until 2015.
In 2014, Ace Designers was still the market leader in the industry, but the industry was becoming
increasingly turbulent, and major competitors such as Lakshmi Machine Works, Lokesh Machines
Limited, and Jyothi CNC Automation were scaling up their production capacities. Ace Designers had
been trying to differentiate its products from their competitors by incorporating ergonomic benefits such
as glazed finish and features that ensured convenience for the operators. Any issues highlighted by the
customers, such as inconvenience to the operators due to heavier turning machine door, were being
readily looked into. However, some types of machining tools, especially 2-axis machines, were
increasingly becoming commoditized and about 64 new small manufacturers had sprung up during the
last couple of years, almost like a cottage industry, in different parts of the country. Each on its own was
quite small to pose a threat to Ace, however, put together they controlled 38% of the machine tool
industry and had been slowly nibbling away at Ace Designers’ revenues through dramatic reduction in
prices.
Prabhakar, the head of the High Volumes Business unit at Ace Designers, understood the machine tool
industry better than most analysts did, and could see the tide changing in the industry. By 2015,
Prabhakar realized that it was high time to pay heed to Shirgurkar’s suggestion and decided to try out
half-day indexing in the Jobber LM Elite product line. The Jobber LM Elite was chosen because it was
one of the models with the least amount of customization per machine. The little customization there was,
had to do with the component holding mechanism and few other Optional features of the machine. This
customization too could be carried out within the flow line, assuming the marketing department provided
the information in advance. If not, a separate team made the requisite changes to the pre-assembled
machine at a designated area in the factory, outside the flow line. Also, the Jobber LM Elite was almost a
commodity product and hence needed the most cost reduction.
Prabhakar chose Veerendra Macha (Engineer – Methods) to lead the half-day indexing project. In
addition a small Cross Functional Team of six Engineers from Design, Production Materials and Stores
was grouped to support Macha. Macha was a brilliant 32-year-old engineer with 8 years of experience in
assembly line, specifically in process improvement. The IIMB team members were stumped in their first
meeting, by Macha when he said, “Honda can produce a motorcycle every 9 seconds, why can’t Ace do
it?” Macha, under the guidance of Prabhakar, took up the challenge with gusto, along with Pai (Product
Design) and Shivakumar K R (Electrical Department), who were the other members of the half-day
indexing task force. The team also received considerable support from Nagendra Babu (Manager –
Production Planning) who had over 20 years of experience in Ace Designers and was a trusted confidant
of Prabhakar. Around this time, Prabhakar also reached out to Professor Haritha Saranga, a faculty at
Productions & Operations Management area, IIM Bangalore, for some academic inputs on this half-day
indexing initiative. Under Saranga’s guidance, two of her students, Anand and Rupali, were added to this
taskforce. Both the students were excited to get their hands dirty with some shop floor experience.
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The Ace Designers, Plant-2, where the half-day indexing was going to be experimented, was the oldest
plant in the Ace Designers group; it housed three different assembly lines including the Jobber LM Elite
line. The space available in the floor barely left enough room for the assembly operators to move around.
The plant infrastructure at this point could not be expanded owing to lack of acreage and government
regulations. The shop floor operators were a mixture of permanent line operators and students interning
from the nearby Nettur Technical Training Foundation (NTTF). Each shop floor had its own floor
manager. The assembly process also required highly skilled operators. The assembly process started with
a carcass (Exhibit 4) of the machine, which is a cast iron chassis. As the carcass progressed through the
assembly line, the rest of the components were assembled onto it. The assembly process was divided into
three parts – guarding, electrical, and testing (Exhibit 5).
Carcass Assembly
The Jobber machine started in the line as a bare machine bed (Exhibit 4), which served as the chassis for
the machine assembly. In the carcass assembly stations, the major moving parts of the machine were
assembled onto the bed. The carcass assembly was the most physically exhausting part of the process
owing to the heft of the components involved. Consequently, this station had the most number of NTTF
students who assisted the operators in moving the heavy components. Once the carcass assembly was
completed, it was moved onto the guarding assembly on the Flow Line.
Guarding Assembly
The guarding station was where the external Covers of the machine were assembled. The guarding station
had the highest number of activities compared to all the other processes. Guarding started with
assembling of all the brackets necessary for the components that had already been installed onto the
carcass, and then moved onto adding the sheet metal Covers for the machine. The door assembly along
with the top and side covers of the machine was installed next.
Electrical Assembly
In electrical assembly, the wiring and electronic assembly of the machine was carried out. All the wiring
activities required for connecting electronic parts such as the electric motors, automatic lubrication unit,
machine electric lamp, cooling unit, etc. were performed in the electrical assembly. The electrical
assembly required high precision, as there were hundreds of tiny electric interconnects. Ace Designers
used color coding and labeling to identify the right connections as per global standards. The most
important electronic component that was added in the machine was the CNC controller, which was the
unit that controlled the entire machine through digital programming.
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Machine Testing
Once the assembly was done, the Jobber LM Elite machine was tested on the line itself. The CNC turning
machines were high precision lathes and required considerable amount of testing before shipping. The
testing was divided into three parts: geometric testing, laser testing, and cutting testing. The geometric
and kinematic accuracy of the machine along with the deviations in straightness, flatness, parallelism, etc.
were evaluated through rigorous testing as per globally stringent ISO standards before the machines were
finally shipped.
Half-Day Indexing: Design and Implementation
Macha approached the process improvement from three angles: Product Design, Floor and Assembly
Design, and Inventory Management. The focus of the exercise was to study each activity carried out
during the production of a Jobber LM Elite machine and there was an attempt to either eliminate it or
reduce the time and effort required to perform it. The half-day indexing task force went about creating a
list of all the activities that were performed on the floor, the guarding assembly alone was broken into 93
separate activities. The task force then started figuring out ways to reduce the effort required in each of
them.
The first focus was on how to change the product design itself to reduce the effort required without
comprising Quality or Customer needs. Macha had many aggravated discussions with Pai from the
product design team, trying to highlight issues that would manifest only on the shop floor and not on the
design board. One such instance was the addition of indicative slots on the machine frame and metal
cover. These slots would clearly mark where an operator had to place a screw and tighten it. This would
seem a trivial design change but without the marks, operators used to spend up to 10 minutes locating the
spot using precision measurement tools. Similarly, many of the smooth drilled holes for screws were
converted to tap holes (added threading) which improved the control and efficiency of the process. The
study found that, many sheet-metal parts in the design were not assembly-ready, and needed some re-
work. All this was re-designed. Initially, guarding alone had a throughput time of 22.5 hours, but through
these design changes, the task force reduced 4 hours from it. Next, Anand identified the re-work that took
place because the work was not done properly in the first place or the ideal sequence of activities was not
followed. This further saved 1.8 hours.
The task force next looked at infrastructure improvements in the floor to reduce lead-time and manual
effort. The first change identified was the assembly rail and trolley system. The Jobber LM Elite machine
weighed about 2.5 Tonnes and hence it was quite cumbersome to move along the assembly line from one
station to the next. A rail and trolley system is used to move the machine. The machine was placed on a
trolley and rolled on the rails along the line. The issue with the current system was that owing to the
raised rail system, the coolant tank attached at the bottom of the machine used to be stuck and was
Page 6 of 17
difficult to transport along the line. The more critical issue was that at the laser calibration-testing phase,
the machine had to be crane lifted onto level ground, as the testing process needed the machine to rest on
a solid foundation. This created a strain on the availability of the crane; need for additional labor, and
most importantly added a delay of 40 minutes to the process. With the help of Pai, Macha designed a new
trolley and rail system that could be used across different product lines and eliminated the need to move
the machine during testing. The task force added a simple design change that allowed the trolley to be
screwed tightly to the ground and hence created the level ground required.
Anand and Rupali focused on reducing the manual effort that each operator had to exert, as they felt that a
tired operator would be an unproductive operator. They suggested introduction of a pneumatic gun system
in the line so that the operator could tighten screws automatically, without much effort. In a product such
as Jobber LM Elite, joining parts through screws was a major activity and hence very relevant to the
process. Moreover, there was also scope for manual error when the operator either under- or over-
tightened the screw. Nagendra joked that there were instances when the operator was too strong or
frustrated, the screws could be broken owing to the pressure applied. Also, operators could access the
machine from only one side. The task force therefore redesigned the line in such a way that assembly
components could be stored on both sides of the line using storage racks (Exhibit 6). The task force also
introduced one cross-trained operator in the line who could operate in all stations in the instance of
unplanned absenteeism. To reduce the time required to find the floor manager when critical issues arose,
Macha decided to place a red and green tower lamp on top of each station, in true Toyota Production
System (TPS) style. The task force was able to reduce a further 1.5 hours of activity time from all the
above improvements.
The study of the floor activity map by Anand and Rupali revealed that in many stations, first a smaller
assembly of components was carried out and this sub-assembly was then assembled onto the machine.
Sub-assemblies such as power unit, coolant unit, axis motor fixture, etc., did not interfere with the other
activities on the line. The task force therefore decided to move these sub-assemblies onto a separate area
on the shop floor itself, feeding the main assembly line (Exhibit 7). In some instances such as electrical
components, the sub-assembly was shifted completely to the supplier itself. Along with sub-assembly
process, the task force also made provision to store the component inventory required for one week in the
shop floor itself and halved the replenishment time of components. This greatly reduced the component
access time for operators and the inventory storage effort. These activities reduced a further 4.2 hours in
the guarding throughput time.
By mid-2015, Macha had completed the redesign and made a digital presentation to Prabhakar and the
senior management; they approved the plan wholeheartedly. Buoyed by the response, Macha made the
same presentation to the floor workers and in contrast to his expectations, the shop floor operators
rejected the plan vehemently. Macha had designed the half-day indexing project, not just to reduce the
cycle time, but also to reduce the workers’ effort. However, despite presenting the plan almost ten times,
the workers were not ready to accept it. The workers’ argument was that if they have to do something in
half the time, they would end up exerting twice the effort.
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Macha felt that the solution would not work without the buy-in from the operators. They might do it once
in his presence, but at other times, they were likely to create problems, which could result in stoppage of
the line. The situation was at an impasse and Macha finally decided to assemble a machine by himself and
demonstrate it to the workers. After the successful assembly of a machine all by himself, he invited the
operators to do it with him. He insisted the team take double the break time as usual and take rests in
between the process, even with all that they were able to finish all stations under four hours. The workers
were not given any additional work if they finished the activities at a workstation before four hours. After
understanding the motivation behind the plan and the reduction in effort levels, the operators became
convinced of the half-day indexing and accepted the changes. All these efforts contributed significantly to
the success of the half-day indexing experiment.
VALUE STREAM MAPPING: A STUDY IN WASTE ELIMINATION
In the meantime, as a market side experiment, Ace Designers reduced the price of an older Jobber model
by 10%. The reaction of the market was phenomenal. They received 200 orders in 20 days. Well the
market had spoken and it was time to play the high volume-low cost game. Prabhakar’s original plan was
to expand the half-day indexing to rest of the lines, to double the productivity of the plant. While Macha
was figuring out how to iron out any remaining issues on the LM Elite line, Prabhakar turned his focus to
optimizing it further, before adopting it to other assembly lines. Prabhakar had also been worried about
whether the supply chain would hold up when the demand scaled up. Also, as the Jobber LM Elite model
was meant for mass production with little customization, the increased price based competition left wafer
thin profit margins. Keeping this in mind, Prabhakar requested Rupali’s classmates from Business Process
Improvement (BPI) course at IIM Bangalore to conduct a value stream mapping (VSM) exercise to
identify further cost reduction opportunities in the Jobber LM Elite line. The team first met Madhavi
Chandrasekhar (Senior Manager - Market Development) and Prabhakar, who gave them a quick
orientation about the company and sent them off to the shop floor. Next, the team met the two most
instrumental people in the LM Elite line Nagendra Babu and Veerendra Macha, who apprised them of all
the assembly processes so that the mapping process could begin.
As part of the VSM team, Rupali and Anand were joined by Sambit Rath, Archana Valsan, and Nishant
Kumar Pati. As part of the BPI course at IIM Bangalore, each group of students were required to take up a
real process and come up with an improvement plan. The team started by categorizing each of the stations
in the line, and then zoomed in at the workstation level for their analysis. Each individual took charge of
assessing a particular workstation. Sambit was assigned the role of VSM manager to tie together the
whole process. Archana using a stopwatch personally collected the data regarding the duration of
activities for each of the workstations. The team planned to use the collected data for calculating certain
key metrics for each of the workstations and the assembly line as a whole. These included number of
operators, cycle time, uptime, changeover time, lead-time and takt time. Nishant also tried to find out
areas of waste (Muda, Mura, and Muri), which could be eliminated. Lastly, Anand and Rupali planned to
generate the time graph of value-adding time vis-à-vis the non-value-adding time.
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SHOP FLOOR INFERENCES AND OBSERVATIONS
Exhibit 8 describes the information gathered by the team. The observations on the shop floor revealed
that some of the stations required far lesser time to complete their respective activities and so their
proportion of value-added time to the total throughput time was low. Some stations had contract operators
working on the machine and some stations had trainees (NTTF students). Based on the observations and
interactions with the shop floor employees, the team members jotted down the points listed in Exhibit 9.
All the data collected was compared against the planned labor requirement provided in Exhibit 10. The
VSM team also studied the forecasted demand versus actual production details of Jobber LM Elite
(Exhibit 11). The team noted that Ace Designers was unable to fulfill all the orders that they had planned
for the Jobber LM Elite, which resulted in slot losses (Exhibit 12). The reasons for this were inadequate
availability of raw material, insufficient labor, and lack of pull from marketing or low quality of output.
These issues made the team mull over the persisting inefficiencies in the half-day indexed production line.
Component Procurement
The half-day indexing had naturally doubled the raw material needs of the Jobber LM Elite line. The
procurement team had responded by reducing the replenishment time from 15 days to a week for many
components. However, there were delays in raw material supply, as the suppliers were unable to scale up.
Many of the suppliers were small players and neither had the expertise to carry out process improvement
nor could they invest in sudden capacity expansion. The factory also imported components from three to
four foreign suppliers, with a lead-time of 45 days. Besides this, some of the domestic suppliers for
components such as Elite bed, saddle and spindle also had high lead times of 35 to 40 days. The lower
value components such as sheet metal, nuts, screws, fasteners, etc. had lead times of about one week.
Ace Designers carried out centralized procurement for all of its factories in Bangalore, in order to garner
economies of scale. They were also able to exercise better control over suppliers because of their large
orders. Further, they needed a much smaller procurement team to manage this centralized system.
However, this central procurement strategy posed its own set of problems while dividing the raw
materials in times of shortage. The procurement manager shared his concerns with the VSM team:
“During material shortages, it is a real challenge to allocate the resources between the
factories. In a particular instance, there was shortage of a component at two different
plants. So, when the component arrived, one of the procurement managers took all the
components for his plant without any regard for the other plant.”
Component Inventory Management
The Jobber LM Elite machine had a BOM containing 570 components ranging from electrical parts, high
volume castings, electronic parts, guarding sheet metal, nuts and bolts etc. However, only 10% of the
input components accounted for more than 80% of the cost of the machine (Exhibit 13). The inventory
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team had decided on a component lead-time of 7 days and stocked all the required components to make
12 machines on the line itself. Each machine had a production order, which outlined the components
required per assembly workstation of the line. As each unit progressed along the line from one station to
another, the stock inspectors updated the changing levels in real time. When the inventory levels fell
below the cut-off, the procurement team was notified by SAP and the procurement was initiated. There
had been instances where the line had to be stopped owing to supplier delivery issues, but in most
instances, the flexibility of the line allowed the work to progress until the components were received.
One of the major issues was space constraints on the assembly and sub-assembly lines, as all the
components needed to be stored on the shop floor as well. This also created a certain level of duplication,
as the inventory was stored in the shop floor and at the general inventory holding location. The inventory
manager estimated at least a 30% increase in space requirement owing to this practice.
WHAT NEXT?
Rupali and her team reached the campus after their last plant visit. They had collected all the requisite
data and the meeting with the management was scheduled for Monday morning. Rupali wondered if they
had identified all possible areas for improvement, and whether they would be able to provide some
actionable recommendations to improve the half-day indexing before it could be implemented on rest of
the lines. She was a bit nervous as this was her first presentation to a company’s board and hence wanted
to do her best before joining her consulting job, which would require her to do the same many more times
in the future.
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Exhibit 1
Jobber LM Elite: CNC Turning Lathe
Exhibit 2
Indian Machine Tool Industry 2013-14 & 2014-15
(Values are given in USD Million)
2013-14 2014-15 Growth Rate

Production 520.41 645.84 22%
Exports 36.78 41.86 13%
Imports 698.46 794.89 14%
Consumption 1182.09 1399.01 18%
Source: Indian Machine Tool Manufacturers' Association, Industry Report 2014-15
Exhibit 3
List of Micromatic Group Companies (AMG)
1 Ace Designers Ltd.
2 Auto CNC machining Pvt. Ltd.
3 Ace Manufacturing Systems Ltd.
4 Ace Multi Axes Systems Ltd.
5 Micromatic Machine Tools Pvt. Ltd.
6 Pragati Automation Pvt. Ltd.
7 Micromatic Grinding Technologies Ltd.
8 Ace Manufacturing Intelligence Technologies.
9 Micromatic Machine Tools [Shanghai] Co. Ltd.
Source: http://acedesigners.com/overview/ace-micromatic-group [Accessed: 19 Mar 2016]
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Exhibit 4
Cast Iron machine bed (chassis)
Exhibit 5
Jobber LM Elite assembly line layout before half-day indexing
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Exhibit 6
Jobber LM Elite line after half-day indexing6
Source: Based on IIMB student observations during the VSM project
Exhibit 7
Schematic of Jobber LM Elite assembly line showing the material flow from the sub-
assemblies
6
S1, S2 are the two sub-regions earmarked for the storage of the machines’ chassis, F1 an F2 are the two sub-regions earmarked for defect rework
Page 13 of 17
Source: Based on IIMB student observations during the VSM project
Exhibit 8
Data collected by the student team from the shop floor
Start End Number of Number of Changeover

Station Name Time Time Operators7 Trainees Time
Carcass 1 (C1) 8:45am 12:01pm 1 1 5 minutes
Carcass 2 (C2) 9:25am 12:22pm 0.2 1 2 minutes
Guarding 1(G1) 8:45am 11:57am 1 0.33 1 minutes
Guarding 2(G2) 9:30am 12:17pm 1 0.33 1 minutes
Guarding 3(G3) 8:45am 11:57am 1 0.33 1 minutes
Electrical 1(E1) 8:45am 12:15pm 2.8 0 1 minutes
Electrical 2(E2) 9:37am 11:02am 0.2 1 1 minutes
Testing 1(T1) 9:00am 10:27am 1 1 1 minutes
 Tea break from 10:05 am to 10:20 am for all the ten workstations. (This time needs to be subtracted from the total time obtained using the
above stated time details.)
 The batch size for the assembly line was one unit and the factory operated only one shift. Each shift was of 8-hour duration and started at
8:45 am. The first indexing of the day started at 12:30pm simultaneously for all the workstations. The indexing of the day ended at 12:35
pm and subsequently the workers broke-out for lunch.
 The monthly salary of an operator is INR 22500 and that of a trainee is INR 7500.
7
An operator count of 0.2 implies that an operator is spending 20% of the total time available at the work station; similarly 0.8 implies that an
operator is spending 80% of the total time available at that particular workstation.
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Exhibit 9
Shop floor observations of the student team
 At one particular workstation, the operator was absent as he had to go to his village for some
work. He had put in his leave application the day before, but on the day of his absence, there
was no one to work at his particular station. His replacement came in after a time lag of
about 1.5 hours.
 The drill gun in one of the stations malfunctioned and the operator spent a lot of time finding
a replacement gun. He was sharing it with other operators until then, which created delays.
The erroneous drill gun was detected at 9:20 am; the replacement drill came only at 10.53
am.
 Even though each operator had a personal toolkit holder, lot of the tools were being shared,
which created some delay and wait times. Certain tools like the micro size screwdriver were
being shared, because the operators could not locate where they were due to their small size.
 Operators spent around 2-3 minutes unpacking most components because they were shrink-
wrapped. In addition to that, a lot of waste was being generated by the wrappings, which
needed a separate milk run to clean up.
 The factory overall had a great employee culture with less than 4% employee turnover.
However, the team noticed that during the tea breaks, lunch etc., the operators and the trainee
NTTF students sat and socialized separately with little interaction between the two groups.
Exhibit 10
Planned Manpower for 8 and 4 hour Indexing
Station 8 Hour Indexing 4 Hour Indexing
Name Number of Operators Number of Trainees Number of Operators Number of Trainees
Carcass 1 1 2
Carcass 2 1 2
Guarding 1 1 0.5 1 0.33
Guarding 2 1 0.5 1 0.33
Guarding 3 1 1 1 0.33
Electrical 1 1 1
Electrical 2 1 1
Testing 1 1 1
Testing 2 1 1
Testing 3 1 1
Source: Company Database
Page 15 of 17
Exhibit 11
Jobber LM Elite Planned Vs Actual Monthly Demand
Monthly Actual Orders Actual Dispatches

Month
Forecast Received Made
Apr-2015 0 0 0
May-2015 0 0 0
Jun-2015 0 16 0
Jul-2015 10 10 6
Aug-2015 32 37 26
Sep-2015 42 27 31
Oct-2015 35 24 19
Nov-2015 35 25 14
Dec-2015 17 31 21
Jan-2016 22 19 24
Feb-2016 30 12 22
Mar-2016 35 31 25
Exhibit 12
Jobber LM Lite: Lost orders
Month Slot Lost Men Material Marketing Quality

Sep-15 5 1 3 0 1
Oct-15 9 2 3 0 4
Nov-15 2 2 0 0 0
Dec-15 5 1 1 3 0
Jan-16 1 0 1 0 0
Page 16 of 17
Exhibit 13
Cumulative percentile of number of distinct raw materials (X-axis) Vs. Raw material cost
as a percentage of total cost of the product (Y-axis)
120.00%
100.00%
80.00%
60.00%
40.00%
20.00%
0.00%
23.69%
97.74%
2.96%
5.92%
8.89%
11.85%
14.81%
17.77%
20.73%
26.66%
29.62%
32.58%
35.54%
38.50%
41.46%
44.43%
47.39%
50.35%
53.31%
56.27%
59.23%
62.20%
65.16%
68.12%
71.08%
74.04%
77.00%
79.97%
82.93%
85.89%
88.85%
91.81%
94.77%
CumulativePercentile
Page 17 of 17

Case Study 5 Ace Designers

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IMB 595

ACE DESIGNERS – COMPETING THROUGH

HARITHA SARANGA, RUPALI KAUL AND ANAND KRISHNAN

THE MACHINE TOOL INDUSTRY IN INDIA

ACE DESIGNERS AND THE ACE MICROMATIC GROUP

ACE DESIGNERS’ PROCESS IMPROVEMENT JOURNEY

Half-Day Indexing: Design and Implementation

VALUE STREAM MAPPING: A STUDY IN WASTE ELIMINATION

SHOP FLOOR INFERENCES AND OBSERVATIONS

Component Inventory Management

2013-14 2014-15 Growth Rate

Source: Indian Machine Tool Manufacturers' Association, Industry Report 2014-15

Source: http://acedesigners.com/overview/ace-micromatic-group [Accessed: 19 Mar 2016]

Jobber LM Elite assembly line layout before half-day indexing

Source: Based on IIMB student observations during the VSM project

Source: Based on IIMB student observations during the VSM project

Start End Number of Number of Changeover

Source: Company Database

Monthly Actual Orders Actual Dispatches

Source: Company Database

Month Slot Lost Men Material Marketing Quality

Source: Company Database

Source: Company Database

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