TATA MOTORS

Project Submitted for Operations Management (OPS 5002)

by

Working Group N1

DEBAYAN DASGUPTA – 20F316

DUDDELLA ARUN KUMAR – 20F319
KESHAV GUPTA – 20F330
MOHIT DIVEKAR – 20F336
NAVEEN GEORGE KOSHY – 20F339
SWARAJ DWIVEDY – 20F359

Date: 27th January, 2021

INTRODUCTION
TATA Motors is quickly rising to compete within the ranks of the world’s top
automobile manufacturers with a revenue of 2.64 lakh crores INR. Established under
the parent company, Tata Group, in 1945, Tata Motors Limited has become India’s
largest automobile company. In the mid-1950s, TATA Motors created their first
commercial vehicle and they have steadily grown and expanded to become a major
contributor in the Indian automobile market ever since.
Tata Motors leverages a global comprehensive Network of distribution running in 182
countries and over 6,600 contact points for sales and service, with presence of
branches across the world along with franchisee and joint venture operations in
various countries. TATA motors filed 80 new patents in 2020 and got approved 98
patents in the same year.
COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGES
 Companies of the Tata Group invest Rs.12,500 crore cumulatively on
development & research.
 A 'start-stop' engine technology produced by Jaguar Land Rover that stops
the engine when the vehicle is not moving and contributes to increased fuel
efficiency
 High quality steel for Tata's safer and fuel-efficient vehicles sourced from
Europe
 The cheapest car in the world, Nano, Group invention, launched in April 2009
by Tata Motors has 37 patents, which secures a competitive advantage in
terms of innovation.
 Tata Steel, which obtained British organisation Corus in 2007, documents
round 50 patents every year.
 To ensure cost efficiency and a sustainability equation that gives the company
a green edge, Jaguar Land Rover has redesigned its supply chain.
PLANT LOCATIONS
The presence of Tata Motors slices through India's length and width. In excess of 4
Million of Tata cars drive on Indian highways. In India, the firm has four major
manufacturing bases at Jamshedpur, Pune, Pantnagar and Lucknow.
COMPETITIVE STRATEGY
TATA motors employ the following Strategies:
1) Focused Cost Leadership:
By launching Tata nano at the most economical Price, TATA used cost
leadership strategy to gain market share that was noninheritable by 2
wheelers or the other low-end cars like Alto. TATA Nano produced variants
catering to different sections of the society which included a basic version and
a sports edition model. Although the model did not turn out to be successful,
TATA became a more prominent player in the automobile industry.
2) Focused differentiation strategy:
TATA targeted the higher-class population by acquiring Jaguar Land rover and
distanced itself from the cost leadership strategy for this model. This section
of the society who yearns to display a status symbol are comparatively
 insensitive to price and focus more on looks, quality and services who cherry-
pick cars.
OPERATIONS
1. TATA motors employ a Capital Equipment Manufacturing division which
provides capability for tooling development in accordance with global
standards.
2. TATA motors have a structured and carefully planned out training program for
apprentice, which ensures a stable source of skilled talent to run the
operations of its plants
3. TATA motors employ Kaizen methodology for continuous improvement of its
operations and involving all the employees. This lean manufacturing tool
improved the quality, productivity, safety, and workplace culture over time,
which resulted in an overall improvement of the efficiency of the
manufacturing process.
4. TATA motors have successfully endorsed conformance to six sigma standards
which certifies the superiority of the production purpose and its output.
5. TATA motors implemented Total productive maintenance (TPM) philosophy to
improve and maintain the integrity of production and the quality of systems
using machines, equipment, employees and supporting processes.
6. TATA motors have automated a huge proportion of the manufacturing
processes in its plants which has helped it secure a great reduction in its
throughput time and reducing time lost in its bottleneck processes across
workstations.
7. TATA motors follow the principle of Distributed Manufacturing systems by
geographically distributing both production and assembly systems across the
world which includes units at South Africa, Thailand, Bangladesh, Brazil etc.
This helped in decreasing the lead time and enabled quick and cost-effective
delivery across the world. This strategy has helped TATA motors to survive the
strong wave of in-house production mandates enforced by many nations.
8. TATA motors ensure effective capacity utilization to drive its revenue streams
by enabling Mercedes Benz cars to make use of its paint shop infrastructure,
an additional source of revenue thereby resulting in a symbiotic relationship
between the behemoths.
9. Tata motors conducts regular maintenance check-up and lubricating of its
equipment is done at regular interval.
10. State-of-the-art Information Technology (IT), Computer-aided design (CAD)
and Computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) technologies have been
extensively leveraged for rapid prototyping, effective representation and
design integration across multiple disciplines which helped TATA motors
shrink the design cycle time.
11. TATA motors have adopted a service-oriented management architecture that
treats services as assets and manage them on a life cycle basis.
12. Business Service Management (BSM) tools from BMC have been employed
which provides a comprehensive platform for optimizing various parameters
including business value, IT costs, risk, and quality of service. TATA motors
adopted IT service management concepts charted in the ISO 20000:05
international standards, along with best practices outlined in the IT
Infrastructure Library (ITIL) Version 3.
 13. TATA motors employ process benchmarking which emphases on designated
production processes in the business rather than on the business as a whole.
It improves different phases of the production process and increases
efficiency by “learning from others”.
14. Value Engineering team ensures continuous efforts are made to reduce the
cost of service in TATA Motors. Rejection of input parts received from vendors
is very closely monitored in all the departments. The vendors are penalized if
rejection exceeds the defined limits. Apart from rejection of regular parts some
stations are identified as CTQ (Critical to Quality) Stage. Special care is taken
of the components added on these stations. Any negligence on these stations
may lead to a customer claiming replacement of the vehicle.
15. TATA motors have a competitive advantage whereby, it can leverage its
position of being a part of the TATA group of companies by sharing resources
and skills.
Sharing of Activities/Resource:

Sharing of Skills/Core Competence:

TAML: TATA Advanced Materials Limited

TACO: Tata AutoComp Systems Limited
PRODUCTION CAPACITY OF VARIOUS PLANTS
Location Type of vehicle manufactured Productio
n Capacity
(Lakh/PA)
Pune Passenger Cars 2.7 L

Pune Commercial Vehicles (MCVs and HCVs, LCVs, 2.5 L

Utility vehicles)
Jamshedpur Trucks & Special Purpose Vehicles 1.08 L
Lucknow Buses 0.6 L
Pantnagar Mini Truck (Ace), Passenger Carrier (Magic) 2.25 L
(Uttarakhand
)
The utilization of the capacity is a meager 66%. To achieve operational efficiencies
with low utilization the following is carried out -
 Decreasing start-up time / cost for batch runs
 Cutting down older product lines which decrease the number of models and
hence helps achieve better efficiency
 Revamping plant layout for new product lines
  MQB Platform which helps for same setup for different models and helps
achieve 20% savings in operating cost
As “the company under study has multiple plants situated at different locations,
hereafter we have limited the scope of study to a single location which is Passenger
Car Business Unit (PCBU), K Block, Pune.
PUNE PLANT

The Pune facility comprises of two units: Pimpri which is spread across 800 acres
and Chinchwad occupying 130 acres. Pune plant of TATA motors was established in
1966 and has a Production Engineering Division.
Tata Motors makes both commercial vehicles and passenger vehicles at the highly
vertically integrated Pimpri plant. The Pune unit was established in 1966 and has a
Production Engineering Division, which has one of the most versatile tools making
facilities in the Indian subcontinent. It houses a Vehicle manufacturing complex
producing a large variety of individual items and aggregates. The Passenger Vehicle
Division in ‘K’ block executes the entire process of car manufacture over five shops –
the engine shop, the transmission shop, press and body shops, paint shop and the
trim and final assembly shop.
Tata Motors also has its R&D, product engineering centre, tool-making division, and
design studios based here. The commercial vehicle plant has six assembly lines
manufacturing HMCV, LCV trucks, bus chassis, ICV ultra range trucks and bus
chassis, UVs, pick-ups, Winger vans, and SUVs, with the capability to produce 730
vehicles per day, working in two shifts.
The Engineering & Research Centre (ERC) at the Pune plant was set up to facilitate
new ideas to take shape. The facilities provided at the ERC include a Facility for
improving Engine Performance, Reducing Emissions, Test Tracks, Safety, Designing
and Styling facilities.
The Technical & Productivity Services (T & PS) group looks after the necessary
technical assistance which is required for carrying out smooth production in the
plant. The functions of this group include setting up new assembly lines, preparing
standard operating procedure (SOP) and preparing TS 16949 documents.
Production group carries out production as per the production plan prepared by
production planning and control (PPC). Maintenance group works in co-ordination
with the production team according to a preset schedule.
Manufacturing a car requires a large no. of small and large ancillaries which cannot
be produced inhouse due to various constraints. Hence some of these small parts
are outsourced to various vendors.
Production Strategy being implemented in Tata Motors is ‘Make to Stock'. Make to
stock (MTS) is a traditional production strategy that is used by businesses to match
the inventory with anticipated consumer demand. The MTS method requires an
accurate forecast of this demand to determine how much stock it produces. Demand
forecast is done by the marketing team and based on this forecast a production plan
is prepared and then the production is done in accordance with this production plan.
BENCHMARKING
Inputs are taken from M/s Harbor & Associates (USA) on various Automobile
Manufacturing aspects such as:
- Level of Automation
- Quality norms and standards followed internationally
- Throughput

OVERVIEW OF CAR MANUFACTURING OPERATIONS PROCESS:

1. Machine Shop (Transaxle):
Exhaust Manifold, Intake Manifold, gear box casting, gears are manufactured in the
machine shop. Heat Treatment is also done for Gears and other parts. The plant is
equipped with latest CNC machines.
2. Engine Shop:
Engine is considered to be the heart of any automobile. Five Cs of engine (Cylinder
Head, Crank Shaft, Cam Shaft, Cylinder Block & Connecting Rod) are received from
the machine shop. Cylinder Block is then washed in washing machine with a
cleaning liquid. Thereafter these parts are assembled with other engine components.
On final assembly of engine, testing is done on engine test beds, where RPM, Power
& Torque is checked. Now the engine is ready to be dispatched to final assembly
line.
3. Press Shop:
Various body panels required for making the body of a car are made in this shop.
Cold rolled steel coils are cut into required sizes, this operation is known as blanking
operation. Eleven number of skin panels are made in this press shop and rest of the
small panel is manufactured by the vendors. The blanks which are cut in the
blanking line are stacked on one another. These stacks are placed at one end which
further moves on the press line. The press line consists of hydraulic presses and
pick and place robots. The hydraulic press presses the part into required shape and
the pick and place robots lifts the part from one station and places on another
station. One press line consists of 4-5 hydraulic presses and the final body panel is
obtained at the other end of the press line.
Cold steel rolls enter this facility and are taken through an automated washing,
blanking, and stacking line from a manufacturer called "Heilbronn". Tata motors
mainly use steel from Posco and Tata Steel for their vehicles. Five tandem press
lines from Erfurt then press the flat pieces of steel into various panels that later form
a part of the monocoque. The doors, roof, side panel, fenders, bonnet and boot
panels are all produced under a header press with a capacity of 1200 to 2000
tonnes. At the rate of 34 stampings per minute various panels are output on this line.
The presses are capable to stamp Zinc coated / high strength steel and tailor welded
blanks.13 cranes capable of carrying 50 tonnes each are used for transportation of
dies.

Once the panels are ready, they are stacked up on stands to be carried to the weld
shop:

4. Weld Shop:
The skin panel from the press shop and other panels from the vendors are welded in
the weld shop in order to make the body of the car. Mainly spot-welding operation is
done in the weld shop. Weld shop consists of different sub process areas such as
Under Body Front (UBF), Under Body Rear (UBR), Under Body Complete (UBC),
Main Tack Line, Main Repost Line and Slat conveyor. The job is moved from one
station to another with the help of hoist and tackle or by Lift and Carry arrangement.
Body-In-White (BIW) is the Welding Shop containing 326 robots who position
stamped body parts and accurately weld them together to form the vehicle body,
called a “Body-In-White.” Team Members attach hinges, doors, hood and trunk.
The body panels are ready and stacked up, the next line they enter is the weld shop.
Various subcomponents are put together by precise and state of the art welding
machines. It's here that one realizes why our friendly neighborhood tinker can never
get the fit, finish and quality that we get out of the factory assembly line. High quality
machines from German builders like Kuka, HLS and Nothelfer are used in this
facility. The weld shop is capable of being flexible to handle 8 models simultaneously.
Majority of the line is robotized. On a 3-shift basis and a cycle time of 54 to 90
seconds, the facility outputs a total of 1900 bodies.
Safety is strictly enforced all around the weld shop. Use of safety goggles is a must.
Instructions on how to handle emergencies are pasted all around.
At the end of the line, an automated sealant machine is used to fill in the gaps.
5. Paint Shop:
From weld Shop, the car body is transferred to the paint shop. Here the surface
cleaning operation is done in order to remove the dust particles and the oil
deposition. After this the body passes through the Cathode Electrode Deposition
(CED) bath and then the final colour coat is applied to the car body as per the
production plan. Body moves into the Paint Shop for the nine-hour painting process.
The vehicle rotates 360 degrees in a unique electrocoat bath. Robots apply primer, a
base coat using one of 15 different water-based paint colors. Paint Shop is an
environmentally controlled area. Team Members must wear special overalls and
gloves to protect themselves and the paint’s finish. The Paint Shop has over four
miles of conveyor systems to move the vehicle bodies through each different
process. After drying, the freshly painted vehicle body heads to General Assembly.

6. General Assembly:
Trim line 1:
The painted body with matched doors and other panels enters the trim line. This is
the final assembly line where all trims, engine, transmission, wheels, doors, etc. are
fitted on the body.
Highlights:
- Cycle time of 67 seconds.
- The total production capacity of this line is 1000 vehicles per day on a 2-shift basis.
- Manufacturing process is based on TQM (Total quality management) philosophy.

General Assembly houses approximately 1,150 Team Members. The painted vehicle
body moves where wires, brake controls, and other parts are connected in the
vehicle, under the hood, and trunk. The doors are taken off early and sent to another
area where speakers, power windows, door seals and other parts are installed. In
the chassis area, the underside of the vehicle is completed, and the engine and drive
train are connected to the body. After the tires, battery, front and rear glass, and
seats are installed, the doors are reattached to the vehicle. Oil, engine coolant,
gasoline and other vital fluids are added, and then the vehicle is started for the first
time. A roll booth tests the braking system and vehicle is driven on a two-mile test
track to check for rattles or other issues. Final assembly of the car is done in Trim
cum Chassis Fitting (TCF) section. Completely built car comes out of the TCF which
is ready for testing and inspection.
The entire assembly runs on two storeys. A freshly painted car comes in from the
paint shop on the conveyor belt:

A machine is used to give the car its identity: the VN number is stamped. All cables
for the accelerator and transmission, etc. are put in. Monograms are stuck on the
boot. Sound damping material is stuck and inserted in various parts of the car. The
carpet is laid out. Various items that sit behind the dash are fitted; the steering
assembly is mounted. The dashboard goes in after the items like the AC coil, etc. are
put in. Various rubber fittings are then added. Except for the seats and the roof lining,
most of the items on the inside are already put in. The head lights are added, the
struts and rear shock absorbers are mounted. This trim line is basically a conveyor
belt where the cars keep moving as various items get added in. Front and rear
glasses, wiper blades are stuck. This is the end of trim line 1 where the car will be
picked up and dropped off to trim line 2. A digital board displays the status of the trim
line:

Trim line 2:
In this line, the vehicle is lifted 2.5 meters above the floor area and is moved forward
using an overhead lift. The reason being all underbody fitments are done on this line.
Assorted underbody nuts and bolts are added. Fuel and brake lines are added. Fuel
tank goes in. The rear axle, exhaust and the engine are lifted and fitted using an
automated vehicle guided system for suspension and engine assembly. This
machine requires little or no human intervention when in action. Once it is lifted and
mount by the guided system, engineers tighten crucial bolts to secure the
assemblies in place. A final assessment and check are completed by another set of
engineers to ensure everything is in place. Bumper is added once the engine
assembly is finalized.
QUALITY CHECK
A shower test checks for leaks and once a vehicle meets all quality standards it is
ready to be shipped to a dealer. Quality checks are built into each step in the
production process. Each vehicle has to pass a series of stringent tests, including
satisfactory performance on a two-mile test track. Tata Motors is the first Indian
company that has implemented DELMIA solutions from end-to-end. On successful
completion of testing, the car is ready to be dispatched after Pre-Delivery Inspection
(PDI).

WORK MEASUREMENT
Tata Motors is the first Indian Company to introduce the Balance Scorecard System
in automotive sector in India. The scorecard incorporates SQDCM (Safety, Quality,
Delivery, Cost and Morale). The implementation of the Balanced Scorecard has
enabled greater focus on different elements of operational performance. Defining,
cascading and communicating strategies across the organization have brought about
transparency and alignment. A suggestion scheme has been started by the
management wherein any employee, irrespective of his cadre can suggest an
improvement in the workplace and if this suggestion is approved by the concerned
authority the employee gets rewards points. Once an employee achieves a specified
limit of points, he gets a gift voucher. Apart from this, employees also receive bonus
on certain festive occasions.
CONCLUSION
Tata motors is the flag bearer of the Indian manufacturing industry, being the first
Indian manufacturing company to have its own indigenously manufactured
passenger car and being the first to make forays into the global market. It is a
showcase for the whole industry with world class process management techniques
being” incorporated.
REFERENCES
https://www.patrika.com/business-news/tata-motors-pune-plant-closing-from-march-
24-workers-will-get-salary-5917303/
https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/attachments/indian-car-
scene/1105465d1372840960-pics-tata-motors-factory-detailed-report-making-indica-
indigo-ecs-layout2.jpg