TVS Company Visit

Class again. And another day of lecture without questions, discussion, or collaboration. School in India is much different than in the United States. Rather than challenge professors, students here seem to accept their teachings as doctrine. I’m not sure if that is more of a cultural or educational thing, but it is something that I will not take for granted when I get back home!

Insourcing- “A whole new form of collaboration and creating value horizontally, made possible by the flat world and flattening it even more…very few companies can afford to develop and support a complex global supply chain of the scale and scope that Wal-Mart has developed. That is what gave birth to insourcing.” – Thomas Friedman, “The World is Flat”

Yesterday, we had the opportunity to visit another company in Mysore, TVS. TVS currently manufactures 2 wheel vehicles in India such as mopeds and scooters. They offer a variety of vehicles from a base economy model moped to a larger 160cc model scooter that looks like a scaled down sport bike. TVS was even more impressive than Automotive Axles with operations all over India and a solid foundation of integrated supply chain systems such as JIT, Lean Manufacturing, Kaizen, and Kanban for inventory.

Like most companies in the United States, TVS has taken advantage of the capabilities available to them through their vendors in order to achieve higher operating efficiency and productivity. This insourcing of knowledge from their numerous vendors has allowed TVS to dramatically improve their numbers in the areas of production, operations, and safety while steadily increasing their sales volume and bottom line. TVS currently holds less than 30 percent market share in India, but is already in the planning phase of increasing their exports to countries outside of India. From my conversations with their numerous floor managers, Praxair has been a part of their consultative planning for improved welding processes and metal fabrication projects.