How M&M raised the bar with the Novo

Rajan Wadhera, Chief Executive (Truck & Powertrain Division) and Head, Mahindra Research Valley, knew only too well that this was going to be no ordinary tractor project when the idea was conceived in 2009. The Arjun Novo isn’t just another tractor from Mahindra & Mahindra. It is a story of technology and synergies with the automotive division. The project was executed at the MRV facility in Chennai, the company’s R&D hub.

For Wadhera, the Novo journey started five years ago with the formation of a new workforce for better customer understanding. There were 10 teams which visited Punjab, Chandigarh, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Chattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh. They were from diverse departments like marketing, branding, sales, customer care, engineering and strategy.

The exercise involved getting feedback from nearly 4,000 farmers. All of them said they wanted a product which offered the optimal mix of speed and fuel economy. The project to make this superstar tractor was aptly named M-Star.

“We wanted to literally convert farming into engineering. This could not have happened without the teams understanding of farming and the challenges involved in sowing time, turnaround etc,” Wadhera says.

In the days gone by, engineers would deliver what they thought was right for the farmer but the Novo challenged conventional thinking. Interestingly, some of the company’s workers take leave during the harvesting period, especially those in Swaraj (of the erstwhile Punjab Tractors which M&M acquired in 2008), since labour is scarce.

“I got the clue from Swaraj and realised we needed to change the game. It was important to understand farming and this knowledge was evident within Swaraj which perhaps explains why their products are so good,” Wadhera says.

By 2011, the Novo prototypes were ready and testing began in various soil conditions along with haulage applications. By the end of 2012, the company had over 100 design validations with 30,000 hours of field testing.

Quite unlike its predecessor, Arjun, which has eight forward and two reverse speeds, the Novo has 15 (forward) and three (reverse) which creates a huge difference in productivity. “The transmission gives us eight extra speeds and has been designed in a modular way. This will flow to other variants and reduce costs,” Wadhera says.

The Novo is versatile, with different speeds for a host of applications. It can comfortably handle ploughing, puddling, harvesting, haulage and loader.

The other top priority for M&M was lift capacity of the tractor which was enhanced to 2,200 kg from the Arjun’s 1,600 kg. This was done keeping in mind the shortage of labour on farms. “Machinery must substitute labour and help with lifting. This disruptive innovation had to be done,” Wadhera says.

The challenge was to ensure that with this higher lifting capacity, the equipment was not dropped and safety assured at all times. Designing the control valve, the heart of hydraulics, was therefore an important step to take.

M&M has, consequently, installed a thermal de-burring machine, a first in the industry, costing Rs 5.5 crore or two per cent of the Rs 250-crore project. “It has been especially imported from the US and we will use the same control valve mechanism for our lower range, Project Dhruv, which will be 30-50hp,” Wadhera says.

The Novo has also focused on comfort during operations given that muscular disorders come from long hours of driving. To ensure comfort , control hours must be accessible with enough space. “We defined the farmer’s workplace and put all the controls at one place so that he is comfortable,” he adds.

There is good lumbar support on the seat and the entry/exit has no clutter either. The gear shifting is no longer in the middle but on the side like a car. The Novo offers a lot of legroom and body engineering has seen big strides made here. Likewise, M&M figured out that there was no reason for the farmer to hold the bonnet and get tired. “As in the case of a car, we have now provided a gas strut to open the hood,” Wadhera says.

Like cars, there is an illuminated column switch which helps the operator at night. The cluster indicates any possible malfunctioning. The Novo also has ‘follow me home’ lights where the farmer parks the tractor and the headlamp goes off automatically once he reaches home. The electrical team from the auto division provided inputs for design of the wrap around headlamp.

The synchromesh gear shift is a first in a tractor where the inspiration has come from M&M’s auto division. “There is no longer any inertia. The synchronisers have been carried from the auto domain into the tractor,” Wadhera says. It was done at one-third of the cost that would have been incurred if it had been sourced from outside.

The Novo has a cabin for all-weather conditions as well as an air-conditioned option. M&M believes that farmers here will eventually move to such comfortable alternatives as labour gets increasingly scarce on farms. This is precisely what happened in the West and the Novo could set the pace for this change.