Case summary Supply Chain Design at Jaguar: Bringing Nirvana to Halewood Submitted by: K.

Sasi Kumar, 20120054

Jaguar was planning to produce baby jaguars called X-400 at Fords Halewood plant. One of the reasons in choosing Halewood was the experience of employees in high volume production. This model was planned to produce with high levels of quality, high customer satisfaction, and higher volume at a capacity of about 250,000 cars per annum. But the problem in the existing system at Halewood was that the Fords Escort quality and productivity had fallen and they were focused on number but dint give any importance to quality. So David Hudson, Operations Director was asked to lead the transformation of plant and to bring its performance up to the level of other Jaguar Plants. His strategy was to make the organization quality and customer focused. He first reviewed the supply chain architecture in terms of its suppliers, logistics partners, in house body shop, assembly line layout, and dealers. He formulated a strategy called Nirvana which means to have just one person on Jaguars payroll managing the entire supply chain. One of the key aspects of this process was early supplier involvement, and use of trusted service suppliers with design and subsystems integration capabilities. He introduced very high level of modularity in the design. Selected suppliers were made responsible for integrating the whole subsystem. Next, he set up a logistics vision for a lean supply chain and wherever possible he applied the concept of Nirvana. He decided to work with fewer suppliers and most of the parts were sourced within 100 mile radius. He developed suppliers park where pull system with sequenced line side, just in time system. External logistics system was configured with Intelligent Collection System ie collection of exact requirements on a shift basis from suppliers based in UK and on a daily basis from suppliers based in Europe and delivery within half hour time windows. In this system each drivers who carry the parts required to verify the order at the point of shipment itself. If any difference in units ordered to shipping he would not ship the material. This empowerment to drivers made this much better. Internal material handling related activities were outsourced to competent agencies which reduced the headcount from 95 to 6 in the assembly shop. The body shop was totally re equipped to provide state of the art facility designed for lean manufacturing, incorporating the latest automation and diagnostic systems. Quality Process Sheets (QPS) were made to prepare by the workers to allow workgroups to document a standard for performing their tasks and to capture their experience.

His second strategy was to implement lean manufacturing using a targeted approach called centers of Excellence and third was to transform Halewoods culture from one of distrust, despair and disillusionment to one of mutual respect positive attitude and trust.

Conclusion:
After implementation, the systems like QPS, Nirvana the logistics function seemed to be working on the whole and still had some implementation problem due to lack of experience of the logistics provider in managing the internal logistics. One of the main problems in this system is the quality assurance. Because the supplier who supplies the part and he is responsible for both for its own stocks along the line and for their assembly along the production line. So there may be the chance that the supplier accepts parts that do not comply with norms.