Tata Motor’s heavy engineering and automation arm TAL Manufacturing Solutions is planning to grab over 20 percent market share in India’s in the coming few years.
According to Business Standard, the Tata Motors subsidiary commercially launched its first locally made robot in April last year and bagged orders for 250 from various companies across the country. It has already supplied over 75 robots. And, in what could be an indication of its quality, the company has been getting various repeat orders.
As robotics involve high precision in a hi-tech platform, the idea to make robots for manufacturing cars in India struck the company in the 1990s.
TAL Manufacturing Solutions chief operations officer (robotics) Amit Bhingurde said the idea to use robots came in 1995-98 during the making of Tata Indica. At that time, over 100 robots were installed for select functions during car making and the results were very good as productivity as well as quality improved.
But as the company had to source various components for the car from small suppliers, there used to be some quality defects. At that time, it was realised that there should be some robots, which can be used by MSMEs but as Tata Motors focus was manufacturing vehicles, the idea did not take off.
Company’s COO (robotics) Amit Bhingurde told Business Standard that after separting from parent company Tata Motors, TAL got the opportunity to venture into different products. and that’s when the company thought of creating something for the MSME sector.
