123Pune.com

Pune: Tata Motors, India's largest vehicle maker, is considering the creation of independent production hubs that will focus on making different vehicles at different locations.The company has a market share of 31.2% in the multi-utility vehicles segment and 6.4% in the luxury car segment. Worldwide it is ranked among the top ten in the manufacture of vehicles in the range of 5-15 tonnes. It manufactures heavy commercial vehicles (HCV), light commercial vehicles (LCV), passenger cars and multi-utility vehicles.

After causing an unprecedented stir in the auto world last week with the Nano,Tata's cheapest car ever, the 75-year-old company is looking towards reorganising its manufacturing operation to facilitate expansion and to streamline quality, reliability and ensure specialisation of skills and expertise of all businesses under one roof.

This is a clear departure from the company's long established philosophy of the integrated facility where it had the commercial vehicle and passenger vehicle production lines in the same unit.

Tata Motors has manufacturing plants in Jamshedpur, Lucknow, Pune and Singur. The Dharwad unit in Karnataka makes buses while the Lucknow facility is used for trucks and buses.The company's oldest unit at Jamshedpur is for heavy trucks while the new location of Rudrapur makes the sub-tonne light commercial vehicles like Ace and Magic. The Pune unit makes cars and passenger vehicles. Although Tata Motors had initially planned to roll out the Nano from Singur, the venue has been shifted to Pantnagar in Uttarakhand.

Tata Motors plans to shift its Ace unit from Pune to Rudrapur in Uttarakhand to free up over 5 acres in Pune to ramp up production of new generational vehicles and SUVs like the Sumo, Safari and Indica.

Although the company had been mulling over the creation of independent hubs for some time now, union issues due to benching some employees at its Pune unit forced them to temporarily shelve the plan. Mumbai-based Enam Securities forecasts a subdued growth in the medium and heavy commercial vehicle segment as a result of increase in lending rates and tight availability of finance.

Analysts champion Tata's move to create independent hubs as it would result in scale benefits for common overheads and also help in expansion of product lines.
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