GEAR SHIFT: Bajaj Auto's Chakan unit will be doing 2,400 mobikes per day by March 2004

Roughly 45 km from Pune city and 25 km from Bajaj Auto's headquarters in Akurdi is tucked away the hushed village of Chakan, home to an industrial belt that boasts, amongst its many commercial notches, a Hindustan Petroleum depot, a L'Oreal factory and, bang opposite, Bajaj's motorcycle-manufacturing unit, which unfolds over 192 acres. As you enter the factory, expectations of being enveloped by the hum of machines and din of shopfloor banter are quickly belied. That could be because this plant that manufactures 1,200-1,300 Pulsars-Bajaj's indigenous wonder machine-on one line has a lean workforce of 700 "cell members" (don't you dare call them workers).

Bajaj Auto is due to roll out another blockbuster 125 cc model in September from the Chakan plant, codenamed the K-60, and recently branded 'Discover.' In place is a second line to manufacture this bike, and as you walk about the factory, you get faint glimpses of the Discover in various stages of assembly. Pradeep Shrivastava, General Manager (Chakan & Engineering), expects to quickly ramp up to 800 per day in three months, and by March 2005 Bajaj Auto's Chakan plant should be doing 2,400 bikes per day, one half Pulsars and the other Discovers.

Chakan is where the Pulsar, Discover and every subsequent Bajaj-designed motorcycle will be manufactured. The bikes that result out of the partnership with Kawasaki of Japan will roll out of the Waluj plant in Aurangabad-scooters are made at Akurdi. To put it simply, Chakan isn't quite like Akurdi or Waluj.

It was in 1998 that the foundation stone of the Chakan plant was laid. Rajiv Bajaj, Joint Managing Director, Bajaj Auto, had concluded the company's traditional approach to making scooters and motorcycles was not conducive to transforming the two-wheeler giant into a low-cost, high-quality producer. In the midst of intensifying competition in the high-growth mobike segment, what Bajaj badly needed was a break from the past. That's how Bajaj Auto's plant at Chakan took shape by October 1999. Enter Shrivastava, a Bajaj veteran of some 20 years, whose earlier stints in exports, quality assurance and with Bajaj's first four-stroke scooter easily made him the ideal man to take up the mandate of crafting the Chakan plant as a benchmark in productivity, costs and quality. Rajiv Bajaj, point out company executives, now visits Chakan perhaps just two to three times a year-and that's not because it's a long way from Akurdi to Chakan. It's because he's got Shrivastava at the helm.

WHAT MAKES THE PULSAR PULSE

» Chakan delivers two vehicles per man per day. Soon will go up to three vehicles » Only 700 "cell members" will soon be making 2400 bikes a day » Developed an in-house painting system for Rs 14.4 lakh. Original cost: Rs 7 crore » Inventory build up is less than half a day » Workers are multi-skilled: 300 are trained at firefighting

A variety of numbers and ratios indicate the reason for Bajaj's ample faith in Shrivastava. Work in progress is never more than 0.2 days, inventories less than half a day, and 30 per cent of Bajaj's vendors use the Kanban card, which enables just-in-time material handling. That's why Chakan is able to deliver two vehicles per man per day, and the target is to take that figure up to three once the Discover's production ramps up (at Waluj the output to people ratio is 1.2, excluding three-wheelers, and at Akurdi it is 0.8). The ratio of the indirect to direct workforce is also much lower at Chakan, at just 4 per cent, whilst at most other plants there are as many as 20 indirect workers (material suppliers and quality control people) for every direct worker on the shopfloor.

If Shrivastava can manage with such a lean team, one big reason for that is the multi-skilled nature of his personnel: A forklift operator doubles up as a computer systems Man Friday, a mechanical engineer is equally adept at drafting on a pc, another engineer is also trained as a safety officer, and a few on the assembly line also slip into the mandatory compounder's shoes, dispensing medicines whenever required. What's more, 300 of the 780-strong force is trained in firefighting. "All this reduces the need for indirect people," explains Shrivastava, adding that the other Bajaj plants are also attempting to replicate this model.

Being a tight, cohesive unit has its advantages. Shrivastava can talk to them on a first-name basis, and conversations need not necessarily be restricted to shopfloor banter. "For me, enthusiasm is more important than experience," says the head of Chakan, who is pretty famous for his rather radical approach-at least by traditional Bajaj standards to labour. Yet, it's precisely this enthusiasm that Shrivastava is able to elicit on the 30,000 sq metres of shopfloor that makes Chakan special. It's such fervour that has, for instance, been responsible for the conversion costs coming down by 20 per cent in the crankshaft processing sequence.

It's resulting in plenty of innovation too. Consider this dash of ingenuity: A painting system for the assembly line was being made by a supplier for some Rs 7 crore. And this was being used by most two-wheeler manufacturers. The Chakan workers then got into a huddle, and figured they could work out some savings here. They figured right: They developed home-made robots, each for Rs 2.4 lakh. Now six would be needed on the assembly line, which basically meant that Bajaj was spending just Rs 14.4 lakh on its painting system as against Rs 7 crore. When the original supplier got wind of the developments at Chakan, it could do only one thing: Bring down its cost. The painting system now costs just Rs 20 lakh.