Plant with a plan

Pune:
18 January 2003

Pune: The car itself was never the star in the Indica saga. The real luminary of Tata Engineering's automobile ambitions is the striking manufacturing facility where India's first - and now a second - truly indigenous passenger car finds form and substance.

Spread over 158 acres in the Pimpri-Chinchwad industrial belt near Pune, the plant is probably the most modern and automated installation of its kind in the country. But this standout symbol of Indian engineering is representative of more than just that: it is another example of the Tata vision; it is a story of pluck, skill and discipline; and, crucially, it is about people rather than machines.

Whether on the shop floor, in the managerial offices or the corporate enclaves, there's a feeling among Tata Engineering employees that the setbacks of the recent past are history and that a future full of exiting possibilities beckons. Driving the good vibrations is the Indica. Though it may not be the company's biggest money earner, the car's good health is the clearest indicator that Tata Engineering is on the highway to the promised land.

The Pune plant rolls out, on an average, 350 Indicas a day, six days a week (its record is 393 in a day), but the market is ready for more. “Over the last two months (June and August, 2002), our sales numbers have depended on how many cars we can make, not on whether we can sell them,“ says J M Thatte, general manager (manufacturing).

Quality before quantity
Putting quality ahead of quantity in its manufacturing manual has made the Indica an ace in Tata Engineering's automotive pack. Ensuring that this quality is reflected in every car that comes off the assembly line is the responsibility of 2,500 shop-floor workers and 552 supervisors and officers.

As with any large-scale engineering enterprise, the Indica plant operates to a rhythm that can seem awesome and mysterious to the inexperienced eye. But there's a method in this immense scheme of affairs, and it's precise, well defined and efficient. The people who make the system work, and the machines that help them do so, share a relationship that is at once complimentary. It helps that the average age of Tata Engineering's Indica workforce is a mere 28.