Tata Technologies achieves CMMI Level 5
September 29, 2005

Tata Technologies, India’s leading end-to-end automotive engineering and design (E&D) company, today announced that it has been assessed at CMMI® Level 5 for projects managed from its Centre for Automotive Engineering & Design (CAE&D) at Hinjawadi in Pune. The Centre caters to automotive and aerospace E&D work for new product introduction (NPI) related projects of Tata Technologies’ global customers. The CMMI is considered the most advanced standard for benchmarking industry's best management and engineering practices. The scope of the assessment was CMMI (Staged) SE/SW Version 1.1 encompassing all process areas except Supplier Agreement Management.

Commenting on this significant development, Tata Technologies’ CEO and MD Patrick McGoldrick said, "In the 1990s IT companies had to adopt CMM for software processes to ensure a level of quality for their customers. Likewise the emerging engineering and design companies will need to adopt the new CMMI for their engineering and design (E&D) processes to give their customers an assurance of quality. We are proud to be among the first automotive E&D companies globally to be assessed at Level 5, the highest level. We join an elite list of global companies that have achieved CMMI Level 5, including Boeing, BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and the US Army and Air Force."

The CMMI Product Suite is at the forefront of process improvement because it provides the latest best practices for product and service development and maintenance. The CMMI models improve upon the best practices of previous models in many important ways. The benefits offered enables organisations to explicitly link management and engineering activities to their business objectives, expand the scope of and visibility into the product life cycle and engineering activities to ensure that the product or service meets customer expectations and incorporate lessons learned from additional areas of best practice (eg, measurement, risk management, and supplier management). It also helps to implement more robust high-maturity practices while addressing additional organisational functions critical to their products and services and is also fully compliant with relevant ISO standards.

(Reference: www.sei.cmu.edu/cmmi/general/general.html)

Tata Technologies’ COO, Jeff Sage further added, "Tata Technologies’ global expansion, covering entire product programmes in the automotive and aerospace industries, demands development and delivery practices that support this comprehensive spectrum. Assessment at CMMI Level 5 marks our achievement of an elite milestone on our quality journey, reinforcing our customers’ confidence that our internal processes and practices contribute positively to the success of their products in the marketplace. Also, it is not a one-off delivery achievement but an assurance that we are integral partners with our customers in their entire end-to-end product design and development processes."

Tata Technologies’ is also the world’s first engineering and design company to be assessed at PCMM Level 5.

About the Capability Maturity Model Integrated:
CMMI® is an enhanced version of the Capability Maturity Model that integrates various other frameworks created by the Software Engineering Institute. CMMI® enables not only the strengthening of software engineering processes, but also risk management and structured decision-making. It facilitates the effective integration of people capability maturity aspects with the software engineering discipline. Customers are assured of world-class quality delivery processes.

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