CIO Coach: Vijay Sethi shares how Hero Moto Corp embraced the concept of Digital Twin

Industry 4.0 will disrupt the value chain of manufacturing industries and force them to rethink the way they design their business processes to enable the converging of the digital and physical world. We undertook a Digital Twin project to do just that. Here’s how

At Hero MotoCorp we are always looking for avenues to enhance productivity, improve quality and reduce costs. Implementing Digital Manufacturing solutions is one of the key initiatives in this journey.

This is aimed to transform conventional manufacturing approach into a digitally enabled manufacturing which is first of a kind for any 2W manufacturer in India.

We started “Digital Twin” project in April 2016 to create digital replica for our then upcoming Vadodara (Halol) manufacturing facility to digitally visualize the manufacturing facility, make necessary changes and enhancements digitally before investing in physical facilities.

“Digital Twin” will be subsequently used as a reference for commissioning of all new manufacturing facilities and validation of new models from manufacturability aspects so that manufacturing issues are identified ahead of pre-production and mass production also corresponding corrective actions are taken well in time with an aim of reducing time to market.

The objective was to visualize the product, process, and resources in a virtual context so as to significantly enhance productivity, reduce costs and improve productivity and eliminate disruptions. Through the digital twin project, we wanted to validate layout planned for the manufacturing facility, prior to physical commissioning of the manufacturing facility to minimize/avoid associated costly reworks.

We also wanted to validate the process planning done for existing and new models on the assembly line to reduce time and cost and to have a process standardization and single repository of all planning data.

The digital twin was also aimed at validating the logistics planning for minimizing the operations cost by inventory optimization, analyzing the impact of process and production plan changes on logistics movements, optimum utilization of material handling equipment and manpower.

We wanted to develop and implement 3D E-Learning modules for operator skills up gradation and for making shop floor paperless.
Our goal was also to validate the planning for machine shops for productivity analysis and improvements i.e. resource optimization, capacity planning, throughput analysis and other improvements.

“Digital Twin” project required collaboration from various departments and collation of information from multiple IT systems in place. There were an initial set of challenges related to technology, data, resources etc as one would anticipate in any new technology and these were taken care as we moved along.

There are set goals in terms of reducing costs at various stages, reduction in time at various levels, availability of 3D training material, making shop floor paperless and few others and we are tracking their achievements.

3DEXPERIENCE platform was core solution for execution of “Digital Twin” project. The Digital Twin project has helped the organization to take a significant leap in technology usage on the shop floor and the benefits have been immense and also made us ready for next set of technology infusion.

We want to replicate this experience in our new and existing manufacturing facilities to constantly drive innovation and efficiency.
As we move forward, we will integrate the current solutions with other solutions as part of our focus on Digitalisation aligned with the strategic business objective of achieving Industry 4.0 standards.