Introduction

Atlas Honda is the largest bike manufacturer in Pakistan and enjoys a strong brand equity
followed by utmost customer loyalty for a course of 50 years – its target customer base being
males in the age group of 18-60 years ever since. The company currently has a production
capacity of over 1.5 million units per annum and enjoys its status as a market leader both in
terms of quality and volume. In the recent years, Atlas Honda has localized its production which
helped it further strengthen its competitive edge - an outcome of its cost down strategy.
Atlas Honda has established two manufacturing facilities in Pakistan; notably in Sheikhupura
and Karachi. This report covers the details of Atlas’s largest in-house manufacturing facility for
motorcycles and related spare parts. Sheikhupura plant is spread over 27 acres and is highly
maintained.
The production of bikes comprises of 3 different stages which in the end lead to the assembly of
its components into a ready to ride bike. It starts from casting followed by manufacturing and
ends up in the assembly stage.

Casting Plant
This is the first stage of bike making that is followed by production of engine parts, fuel tanks
and later the assembling of all components into a ready to use bike.
Low pressure and high pressure casting is done at this plant. Raw material which is the
aluminum alloy is first melted and then molded both at low and high pressures into bike
components.
3650 units are produced everyday with 280 workers and a machine capacity of 5000 units.
Instruction manuals/scripts are pasted alongside workstations to ensure process efficiency and
employee safety.
Finishing in this plant is done by manual labor which is planned to get automated in the next 5-
10 years.

Engine Plant
Engine parts are manufactured in this facility.
Gear Shop
Raw materials from third party vendors are received here which are then deep cut. Hardening is
then done via heat treatment without any forging, i.e. baking at 700 degrees.
Machine tools are imported from Japan while some are manufactured locally to control costs.
These parts are the ones that require change from time to time given their limited life in end
products available for customer use.
Energy management is technology centric and does real time monitoring. Electricity, compressed
air and carbon dioxide emissions are all monitored.
The whole facility is 100% on generator and solar.
Crank Case
Engines' crank cases are manufactured in house. 1.5 million per year is the capacity of both
plants (gear and crank). 600 people produce 3600 engine parts a day.
This accounts for an extremely high Capex, i.e. one machine is for 20 crore to 50 crore. But it
results in quick assembly of engine parts and deals in a capacity of 2200 engines per day.
Stamping
Aluminum sheets are converted into components that are further sent for manufacturing and
assembly. To make the best use of available capacity, stamping for Honda Atlas cars is also
being done at this plant.

Manufacturing Plant
Fuel tank welding and painting is the first step in the manufacturing plant. Product range and
variety comprises of 6 models in 14 different colors.
This plant is multimodel, i.e. both automated as well as manual processes are conducted.
Welding is done by robots. These welded plaints are then painted and taken to the finish area
where sticker pasting and lacking is done.
Completion of the above mentioned processes takes the parts to the main line where they are
assembled in a bike.
To manage efficient costing, coversion of gas to steam is done for energy utilization. This plant
consumes electricity generated in-house so no subsequent breakdowns occur at any of the stages.
Electrode method painting is done to minimize paint wastage and save raw material costs.
3000 units are produced everyday, with 296 workers working in 2 shifts, 6-7 days a week.
A batch size on average comprises of 2000 units. Moreover, Production and Planning Control
(PPC) decides the batch size at large.
Cycle time for a fuel tank is 35 to 40 seconds.
This plant functions on long term planning rather than year on year planning. It operates on next
5-year plan which as of now is in place till 2028.
Seemingly there have been no changes in Honda Atlas's 1-5 model but enhancements have been
made to their component composition that is more environmental friendly.
To conclude, Honda Atlas's manufacturing plant works on great efficiency and effectiveness.
They carry no finished goods inventory and stick to demand based production.

Assembly Plant
Components from all the prior stages assemble here into a ready to ride bike that is first tested by
the staff and later sent to the respective showrooms for sale.
There's a total 2 assembly lines with 3 quality gates per line that help the company abide by its
quality assurance policies. Each line has 70 workers and it assembles 3000 units a day. The
defect amount is 70 to 80 units a day which is considered a part of routine by the plant operators.
Atlas Honda takes 19 seconds to assemble one bike.
Sub assembly is part of the assembly operations where vendor quality checks are made in two
steps. First a manufacturing check is made at the vendor plant to ensure components are being
manufactured at the required standards and later, components are quality checked as they reach
the Sheikhupura plant for assembling.

HR practices and CSR

An internal competition, “Annual Skill Olympics”, is conducted every year to keep the
employees motivated to perform beyond their call of duty and aim for higher productivity every
year. Best performing employees ranked in the order of fair, good, very good and excellent are
rewarded with their respective performance appraisals, promotions and incentives.
Job rotation and cross training of employees is a practice that enables smooth running of
operations and employee satisfaction.
Cross department quality checks are done so a third party perspective and monitoring can be
inculcated in daily operations of a department. They call this practice “safety walk”.
Employee salaries are 40% fixed and 60% variable, i.e. varies with the units they produce each
day.
There is zero gender diversity at the plant and the workforce comprises of all males.

Outsourcing
Mechanical transport and logistics is outsourced to the SRL group that distributes the bikes to
retail showrooms. Some components of the bike are imported from Japan while others are either
manufactured on order by third party vendors or composed in-house.

Inventory Handling
First in first out is used in production with a zero finished goods inventory which infers that
Atlas Honda saves its working capital from being utilized in inventory holding.
Enhancements
Carbon emissions reduced from 27 to 24 kgs from 2019 to 2023 with environmental friendly
production processes and waste management systems in place. Solar plant installation across the
facility has reduced electricity costs as well as the additional burden on WAPDA.