INDUSTRIAL VISIT TO “TATA MOTORS”

By: - SUYASH GUPTA (17250026)

Tata motors Limited is a Indian multinational automotive company with its HQ in Mumbai. It
is a member of Tata group which deals with manufacturing of passenger cars, trucks, buses,
military vehicles etc. Tata Motors has its manufacturing plant in Lucknow, Sanand, Dharwad,
Pune, and Jamshedpur in India. It also has overseas plant in south Africa, Argentina, Thailand,
Great Britain.
Sanand plant is the newest car manufacturing facility located in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. Plant is
spread over an area of 725 acres. This plant was setup for the production of Tata NANO. The
facility is equipped with flexible assembly line and is capable of producing Tigor and Tiago.
The plant is well equipped and can manufacture 475 to 500 cars per day.
Sanand plant is also attached to vendors park of about 375 acres. Vendor’s park consists of the
companies which manufacture some parts required by the Tata motors. All the equipment and
tools are provided to the vendors by the Tata Motors to meet the quality.
The company has an online SAP system for tracking the material. Starting from the steel rolls
to the final product, the company tracks each component made from every steel roll and where
they are kept. So, at the time of assembly there is no delay and mistake.
Tata Motors gives most importance to the safety of the workers and the equipment. For
workers, there are some mandatory safety rules. It includes wearing of goggles, safety helmet,
gloves, safety shoes etc. Whole plant has fire extinguishers placed with columns marked red
for identification of the location. The company has regular check on the performance of the
machinery by following preventive, predictive and daily maintenance. They also have control
charts to keep a check on process stability and process compatibility on daily basis. The plant
maintains an overall efficiency of 92%.
The plant has 5 shops inside the plant. They are press shop, welding shop, paint shop, engine
shop and assembly shop. The press shop consists of a big automated press manufactured by
Komatsu, a Japanese company. Steel sheet are used which is pressed between upper and lower
die and the sheet takes the shape of the die. The shaped sheet is picked up by an automated arm
and placed on the conveyor on which it travels out for further process. There are many sets of
die with different shapes kept which is replaced through robotic arms to produce different
items.
Steel sheets are used to make the body panel of the vehicle which are brought from Tata steel,
another subsidiary of Tata group. All the materials are of quality certified level 4. Inventory is
managed according to the requirement. The material required for the production is made
available a day before, called Supermarket, to avoid any delay.
The sheet produced in the press shop is moved to welding shop for welding operation. All the
sheets are welded together to make the outer body panel of the car. Welding is done both
manually and automatically through robotic arms, but there are some parts like corners where

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robotic arm cannot weld with efficiency due to restriction in degree of freedom and here human
intervention is required.
The body is dipped in paint bath in the paint shop and heated. The final painting is done through
blasting process. As the paint dries, body panel moves to the assembly line where all the parts
are fit in it with atmost care is taken to prevent the painted body parts from scratches like
wearing of wrist band and belt covers, plastic protection on parts while working on it etc.
In the engine shop, some components of engine lie crank shaft, piston, nuts and bolts etc are
bought from different vendors, and machined and are assembled. Then engine is sent for
testing. When the engine is certified, it is fit in the vehicle.
In the assembly line, the vehicle is fixed on stands of a slow-moving conveyor. Vehicle moves
through different work stations where the worker has to finish the job in a prescribed time.
There is a chart attached to the vehicle which keeps a record of the components already fit and
remaining to be fit. This is to check every job of the work station has been done or not.
After the complete assembly, the vehicle is test run on the testing track to see its performance,
after which the vehicle is given ‘OK Certified’ label and moved to the distributing department.
From here the vehicles are moved to different parts of the countries.
Tata Motors works on principles of 5S, Kaizen, Poka-Yoke to increase its productivity and
efficiency. It also helps them to keep the company organised and clean.