Tata Motors to double tech centres
The Financial Express — December 8, 2005

Tata Motors will double the number of its technical centres for research and product development to 12, managing director Ravi Kant said at the Economist Asia-Pacific Automotive Industry Roundtable on Monday. "Currently, we have six technical centres, three in India and one each in S Korea, Spain and UK. We are now looking at increasing the number of such centres to about 12 of them," he said. Mr Ravi Kant, however, did not divulge the details of the timeline and proposed investment for setting up the centres.

Tata Motors does research & development and engineering, design and software development for automobile and automotive components in these technical centers. At present, the company's main technical centers are located at Jamshedpur (for medium & heavy commercial vehicles) and Pune (for passenger car and light commercial vehicles). Besides, it has facilities in Lucknow, S Korea and Spain, the latter two as a result of acquisitions. Recently, the company also indicated that it is looking to set up a car design center in the UK.

This announcement by Tata Motors comes as no surprise given its attempts of late to move to a collaborative approach - where they involve component vendors - from their traditional approach of developing and manufacturing everything on their own from scratch.