THE TATA NANO MAKES HISTORY USING DIGITAL

MANUFACTURING
CASE ANALYSIS

Submitted by:
Gaurav Godara
Hanish Satija
Manoj T

FT173036
FT173037
FT173050

Tata Motors created history when it launched its peoples car, The Nano, which was priced at less
than half of its closest price competitor. The media covered every possible story angle, except one of
the most important factor and that was how Information Systems helped bring the Nanos price tag
to about $2,554. The concept of the Nano coming true was the realization by Tata Motors that the
design of the existing manufacturing process was slowing them down. The existing processes involved
manual efforts to conceptualize, create, and maintain processes, products and plant designs. The
company decided to overhaul the entire manufacturing and operational process and switch to digital
manufacturing. Piggybacking on digital manufacturing, Tata Motors refined its design to
manufacturing approach. Digital manufacturing introduced Tata Motors to concurrent engineering
and gave its assembly lines the capability to acclimatize to several automobile variants. And hence,
Tata Motors was able to come out with a wide range of vehicles quickly and at lower costs.

A key advantage for an automotive company, is its ability to introduce new models in a very short span
of time. Hence, Tata motors decided to change their strategy, and came up with the idea of
proposition of creating a low cost car along with a guarantee of safety, aesthetics and value to its
customers.

Tata Motors understood that manual processes would lead to longer lead times to choose the apt
tools for an operation and to create programs for assembly line robots and such processes were timeconsuming and error prone. This is when Dassault Systems Digital Enterprise Lean Manufacturing
Interactive Application (DELMIA) solution for digital manufacturing was adopted by the company. This
helped automate processes in product design and production engineering planning. It not only helped
in planning manufacturing processes and designing a plants layout, but also virtually simulated the
ramifications of those plans. The goal of this move was to link new model development with plant
optimization.

Tata wanted to present the Nano within minimum possible time without any compromises in quality
and value. To make it happen, Tata adopted Digital Manufacturing resulting in a reduction in time-tomarket for passenger cars by a minimum of six months. Digital manufacturing also helped Tata Motors
in identifying areas of work overload and constraints while simultaneously balancing assembly lines
to adapt to different vehicle variants. The use of Information systems such as the DELMIA lead to a
cost efficient implementation of manufacturing planning process. This led to a 30 percent reduction
in manufacturing and facilities planning timelines, with a 20 percent reduction in cost of the
manufacturing planning process.

The idea of the creation of the Nano and its on time completion and delivery wouldnt be possible if
Tata had not switched to Digital Manufacturing practices. With the existing design of manufacturing
process that often resulted in higher lead times, the dream of to produce the cheapest car would have
remained just a dream. The absence of appropriate tools to carry out a what-if analysis would have
further slowed the process down if a change would have been introduced or if a new product was
rolled out on an existing line. Hence, looking at all the facts and figures, we can say that adopting the
Dassault Systems Digital Enterprise Lean Manufacturing Interactive Application (DELMIA) solution for

digital manufacturing completely revamped the way Tata Motors operated and the Nano might not
have been introduced.

The frequency of bringing out innovative products was less since Tata relied on manual manufacturing
processes as discussed above. Hence, the identification of the opportunity to use information systems
to improve performance, and radically reduce costs was a positive step forward. Tata analysed the
opportunity to enter a new market-space, specifically consumers in India and other developing
countries where they wanted low cost classy cars and decided to design and develop a car for this
market and increase efficiency by switching to digital manufacturing for all of its auto production
thereby increasing flexibility while decreasing production costs. These practises made it possible for
Tata to pioneer in low-cost cars such as the Nano.