Tata Growth Shop (TGS), the Company’s profit centre, which caters to the need for highly specialised and complex fabrication of heavy equipment, such as the launch pad for space rockets, has proved to be the dark horse of the Company. It has stolen a march over all its other departments in the race to implement Dr Goldratt’s “Theory of Constraints.”

To improve throughput at the shop as well as its delivery compliance, TGS developed the Critical Chain Project Management system based on the concept of the “Theory of Constraints.” This has resulted in widespread improvements in the cycle time. Among the most dramatic changes has been the time taken to complete the 100 TPD Sponge Iron Plant Kiln. Earlier, it took TGS 25 days to complete the kiln. After the implementation of CCPM the time taken has literally shrunk to 75 hours 15 minutes. Even more exhilarating has been the reduction in the set-up time of the pinion machining for the 100 TPD Sponge Iron Kiln - it is now 9.5 minutes as against 4 hours earlier.

The entire purpose of the exercise was to avoid multi-tasking and student syndrome as well as adopt a start late to finish early method!

During the financial year just completed, TGS revived and brought into use several old and unused equipments as well as those which were under-utilised to generate better throughput. The profit centre has reduced both the time taken for jobs undertaken by it as well as its set-up time. As a result of these changes the performance index of the Machine Shop touched 100% in FY 2005 compared to its previous best of 92% in FY 2004. The SMH of its Critical machines also increased to 9400/month in FY 2005 compared to 8600/month in the corresponding period last year.