Lakshmi Machine Works Ltd. (Machine Tool Division)

LMW Machine Tool Division (MTD) is a pioneer in manufacturing of CNC Lathe (Turning Centre) and Machining Centres. LMW's customers are component (parts) manufacturers in automobile industry, auto ancillaries, and general-purpose machining/engineering industries. They place orders whenever there is a need to enhance their capacity and/or capability. The major challenge for the company was posed by two realities in this environment:

1. The actual timing of when the customer needs the order delivered is subject to uncertainties (at customer end) like site readiness, loan approvals, market conditions etc.
2. Assembly of each of these machines involves ~1500 components which are procured or imported from over 100 vendors. So, the actual time of order completion is also subject to uncertainties in arrival of all the needed parts on or before the scheduled date of assembly.

This co-existence of uncertainties at both ends, coupled with pressure to meet monthly targets, led to a stressed working environment and undesirable effects including increase in inventory (RM/WIP/FG), customer experiencing high and varying lead-times, poor on-time completions, loss of assembly output etc.

After implementing an end-to-end ‘pull’ replenishment solution for ensuring components availability, the uncertainties delaying the timely assembly of standard machines were dampened. Further, for customised machines, a TOC-based flow manufacturing solution has been implemented to ensure on-time delivery as per committed due date.

Key benefits experienced post implementation are as follows: