Did you know, Ducati can produce up to 300 ‘handmade’ motorcycles per day?
In the year 1994 when Ducati was a new brand in the market, its production capacity was 20 motorcycle a day. But if a customer orders a monster than he had to wait for 9 months for the bike to get delivered, which led to a lot of customer disappointment. But now, with the help of Just In Time (JIT), the production capacity has increased to a maximum of 300 motorcycles per day and the delivery time has reduced to 40-50 working days.
Also, they export 90% of the total amount of motorcycles they produce. In the year 2013, they marked their monthly production by 34,000 motorcycles. Because the production of Ducati is done by using the lean production system, or ‘just in time’, they have now been able to reduce over 85% of the defects in the final product.
The production of the bike with just in time is made with two operations for the engine. First, they build the main body of the engine. Second, after building, they complete the assembly on the main production line. On an average, production time of one engine is 70 minutes until completion.
On an average, production time of one motorcycle is around 90 minutes per motorcycle. The reason behind this is, they have boxes that contain the smallest parts of the motorcycle. The other sized parts such as wheels or the handlebars or the swing arm are located inside the line. Hence, the workers have nothing to do but pick and place all the parts to complete one bike.
One of the reasons why Ducati bikes are so expensive because they are fully handmade. Most companies in the motorcycle and car industries use a wide range of technology and automatic assembly lines to manufacture their products. But, this is not the case with Ducati as each of their motorcycles is carefully made by hand using skilled workers. This hasn’t slowed them down though as they are capable of producing one new Monster every 90 minutes.
Even after having a complete human intervention for the production of their bikes, they are error-free and they have achieved a world-class quality benchmark by means of quality standards. Are you also working towards being world-class?
Written & Compiled by Faber Priyal & Faber Mayuri
