997 acres? CM, experts must come clean
Statesman News Service
KOLKATA, Sept. 18: Does Tata Motors need 997 acres for its "integrated" car manufacturing facility at Singur? At his interaction with the media yesterday, Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee had insisted the company needs all that land. He went on to say the government's experts had independently corroborated this requirement. But inquiries by The Statesman suggest the experts may not have been right and that comparable car manufacturing facilities around the world do with far less and if this is so, the CM ought to explain how his experts came to their finding.
Mr Bhattacharjee had maintained that at the most 70 acres from the project area could be returned to unwilling farmers. He had said that "the central issue was not 50 or 100 acres but how much land would be required for setting up an integrated factory and how much could be taken out of the project area". Mr Bhattacharjee had added that the land requirement was not "merely a claim by the Tatas, but we have consulted experts before arriving at the quantum of land required for the project".
Tata Motors is said to need some 650 acres or so for the manufacturing plant and about 350 acres for ancillary units, to together make up the 997-acre "integrated" facility that Mr Bhattacharjee spoke of. Reports suggest that the company will make 100,000 cars annually, but that the Singur plant will eventually have capacity to produce 350,000 cars.
Proton, the Malaysian car company, makes 250,000 vehicles a year on a 250-acre factory in Shah Alam. Hyundai Motors India has installed capacity to make 530,000 cars at its 500-acre plant near Chennai. Ford Motors makes 300,000 vehicles annually on a 345-acre plot in Turkey. Toyota Motors makes 500,000 cars plus 500,000 engines in a 7 million square feet factory (about 180 acres) in the United States. Honda Motors makes nearly 200,000 cars on a 231-acre plant in Thailand. On the basis of land used by these facilities, it would seem that about one acre of land would be required to make 1,000 cars annually.
Tata Motors would then need 350 acres ~ and not 650 acres ~ to make 350,000 cars, perhaps even less as the Nano is much smaller than the cars made by the other companies.
Source: The Statesman, 19 Sept, 2008.
4 comments:
Whatever has been written in the Blog is not correct
1. the middleclass bengali needs jobs.
2. governnment jobs are very few.
3. the author the way he is celebrating is a Naxal supporter who are anti development, take joy in shedding blood, beleive in causing death and misery to people, beleive in revolution just for the sake of it and are unware what it hopes to achieve.
4. in keeping with their mindset they would prefer to keep the World and India also a agricultural community. So no cities, railways, buses, cars, airlines, bridges, hospitals etc just miles and miles of farms with the revolutionary comrades roaming about with guns in their hands looking for local tyrants.
5. The bottomline is they are confused people and in trying to punish capitalist and tyrants they are JUST SUBSTITUTING THEM.
The comparison done with other leading auto plants around the world is interesting.
It seems to be the result of some inspired google-ing by some reporter who has zero idea about supply chain and operations and industry.
Here is an explanation why:
The nano factory would not be built on the same model like other factories around the world.
Most car factories around the world are assembly units, and if you add the land used by their component manufacturers, the total land used would be much higher than quoted.
Most foreign car manufacturers in India too follow the similar line, infact many models available in india are imported in completely broken down units and just assembled here and thats a mechanism to bypass certain checks and measures which our government has put to increase manufacturing activity in India.
And only a dumb person can equate those factories with the Tata Nano factory which is going to house most of its suppliers inhouse.
Also since Tata's had a limitation to keep the cost of manufacturing withing a given figure, so there would be many process changes and innovations built in the factory design and layout.
So in effect all of this is nothing but rubbish
The Tata Motor Nano production facility is first time in world ... It will rewrite the automobile industry ... Like the way Toyato did. Here Tata Is trying to do something new, which was never done before. In other manufacturers' case, they just assemble the parts and make a car. So you do not see how much area is required for ancillary units. In Tamil Nadu, there are more than 1000 acres are used by the ancillaries, who supply to various car manufacturers in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh. But in East India, there is no ancilliary units except in Jamshedpur. So Tata need to have all the ancilliaries in its premises. Also the production model is totally different form the others. Only Toyota has the same line of production methods. But Nano production is trying to rewrite the Toyato way,too. So need to have the cost minimization, all the units must be in the premises. The parts can be sent by conveyor belts only. SO the argument given by the reporter is not productive because it doesnot go into real story behind a car manufacturing.
To cut down the costs, Tatas want ancillary units nearby for which they need land. I think you seem to miss the point.
The examples that you have given, may not be correct in the context as the requirements cannot be compared and are different.
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