An integrated IT infrastructure has enabled Nissan Sunderland to
become the most productive car plant in Europe, the company said
last week.
Its IT infrastructure has enabled Nissan's UK plant to achieve an
output of 101 cars per employee, just short of the European record
of 105 it achieved in 1998, according to the recent World Market
Research Report on automotive productivity.
IT systems that allow efficient access to up-to-the-minute business
data were a key factor in efficiency benefits, said Ian Semens, IT
manager for corporate information systems, Nissan UK.
"Every organisation must have good data that is easy to access and
its communications must be slick and efficient," he said. "IT
contributes significantly to this."
Nissan's approach to enterprise software is a mix of in-house
development and out-of-the-box products, together with some
migration to enterprise resource planning software from SAP.
"Our MRP [material requirements planning], scheduling and
procurement system requirements could not be satisfied by a
packaged solution without significant customisation. We cannot
afford the long lead-time associated with changes to packages or
bespoke solutions," said Semens.
Simon Bragg, an analyst with ARC Consulting, said Nissan's approach
provided a best-practice example for IT in manufacturing. "It is
clear that the IT group understands Nissan business to a far
greater extent than any system integrator.
"The implications are that users considering outsourcing their
entire IT department to a system integrator should consider
Nissan's mix of in-house skills and judicious purchasing of
packaged solutions and consulting services," he said.
A close relationship between the IT and engineering departments has
allowed Nissan to build cars to individual specification and cut
production times. According to Semens, if the main shop-floor
systems fail, car production line speeds are halved within two
hours.
At the shop-floor level, component inventory and assembly quality
is monitored continuously via machinery program logic controllers
and transponder chips.
As the first component of the car - the engine compartment - starts
along the line, its radio transponder transmits information to
machine controllers for the particular specification of car.
Minimum parts inventory is maintained, with components being fed in
the correct sequence to the production line for individual
vehicles. Some parts - for instance car seats - are made and
assembled to order in less than two hours and loaded on to a
conveyor.
At the top-floor level efficiencies are reaped in design and
production monitoring.
Shop-floor operations are monitored continuous to ensure full
traceability and quality monitoring of vehicles and components,
while machinery downtimes are recorded and analysed to allow
preventative maintenance.
Computer aided design cuts development time for new models by 50%
with measurement and quality data being sent to the shop floor to
validate assembly processes.
Winning system
A partition on the Nissan European IBM mainframe
44 NT servers - 2,000 PCs of which 80% are networked and provide
Office capability in addition to departmental specific
requirements
Four DEC NT and two DEC VMS shop-floor process computers
European datacentre
36 NT servers - several of which provide the Nissan intranet and
extranet capability, the rest providing European Web-based
application processing.