Tata Motors has resumed production at its Pimpri plant in Pune from this week. The decision to restart operations was taken after the Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation and the Maharashtra state industries department approved plans to restart operations from Saturday onwards. The company is permitted to start with 33% of the workforce and dedicated company transport facilities apart from strictly following new safety and hygiene norms. The company had said that the Pune plant begins with ambulance vehicle manufacturing.
Tata Motors started operations with the general shift in the morning on Monday with special gates and entry points created to check employee health and ensure social distancing norms while entering the plant. The company did not share any further details on the number of employees at the plant or the production plans.
Tata Motors had already started operations at Pantnagar in Uttarakhand and Sanand in Gujarat plants last week. The company had said it was making a calibrated start across all plants with limited, essential staff. Selected dealerships for commercial and passenger vehicles too commenced operations nationwide.
Guenter Butschek, CEO & MD, Tata Motors, had earlier said in a statement that as their priority was the safety and wellbeing of employees, customers, and ecosystem partners, they are restarting operations with limited, essential staff in each plant, adhering to all mandated safety norms while efficiently meeting operational requirements. We will scale up operations in a graded manner as the entire enabling ecosystem of suppliers, vendors, dealers, and customers come up to speed, Butschek said.
The company said all mandated safety norms were being diligently followed, with dedicated ‘restart’ teams at each location and it had conducted intensive training for maintaining social distancing at all workplaces, shop floors, and canteen facilities. Enhanced sanitisation measures are being implemented and only limited, operationally required staff are being asked to come to work, Tata Motors said.
Tata Motors makes both commercial vehicles and passenger vehicles at the highly vertically integrated Pimpri plant. 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. Tata Motors also makes defence vehicles from here. The PV plant has two flexible assembly lines with the capacity of producing 1,000 cars per day across two shifts.
But for now the company can operate only one shift per day as people and material movement is not allowed between 7 pm and 7 am.
