Initial thoughts on my tour of Tata:
First, some quick background...
My Italian client, Maus, part of the Carraro Group in Italy, builds grinding, finishing and other machining centers, as well as turnkey production lines for wheel end components, gears and other end products, usually heavy cast parts. 
Another of the Carraro family is GearWorld, who manufactures in Pune, India to supply Tata and other Asian carmakers. 
Tal Manufacturing Solutions is the machine tool and transfer line equipment building division of Tata and is located on the same campus as the Tata car/truck factories in Pune. 
Maus met Tal, formed a JV last summer and produced the first vertical turning center, the Vertiturn, at the Tal factory in Pune, early this month. 
Roberto Sammartin, the managing director of Maus in Italy, invited me to go to the Tal factory on March 4 to see the intro of the Vertiturn, then come back and tell the North American market.  This has now been done, via the PR I sent you yesterday. 
As part of our visit to Tal, our group toured the Tata factories on golf carts, so we were able to see everything.  Maus brought a number of its Euro customers and Carraro affiliates along. 
The manufacturing of most components occurs at shops and factories in the area.  Pune is a boomtown of manufacturers from all around the globe.  I saw American, German, Swiss, Russian, Slovenian and, of course, Italian companies galore. 
There are foundries, heavy metalworking, job shops and contract manufacturers of all sizes and styles there.  New plants going up, every month, I was told.  (I was the only American on the trip, by the way.)  The town reminded me of Detroit in the early days.  (I do a bit of business in automotive and am somewhat familiar with its history.) 
Now, the Tata factories struck me as very efficient and adaptive, as they emphasize short production runs on the truck side, while running the car plants in a more conventional high-speed mode.  Their in-house stamping and painting facilities do much of the body work, while their powertrain and engine facilities are primarily assembly.  All the QC and inspection stations had current equipment, it appeared. 
The Nano is a perfect vehicle for the Indian and other Asian markets, plus the plan is to market it everywhere, including America.  Your recent article said October here, but they told us November, by the way. 
Not nearly the line automation or robotic orientation as you'd see in American and Euro car plants, but it's not needed, when the labor (all union!) is so cheap and the emphasis is on flexibility and quick changeover. 
In terms of plantwide communications (an area where I work a bit for Siemens here), there were bingo boards and zone controllers to monitor CNC machinery and transfer line status.  The overall network topology is less sophisticated than here, but again the greater number of people on the floor offsets this condition. 
The machine tools used (and built) by Tal for Tata and others was perhaps the biggest surprise.  All high-end controls, motors and drive packages (again, an area of involvement for me here with Siemens), very advanced spindles and tool management systems and even the latest in machine guarding (still another area where we work for clients here). 
The cost of steel for Tal is currently half what Maus pays in Italy, so combined with the labor savings and the fact that so many of their component suppliers now manufacture right in Pune, Tal is truly producing a Maus quality machine in India for a fraction of the cost to build it in Italy.  And, since so many of the machines built will be used in-house by Tata or at nearby vendors, this is a potentially huge enterprise, from the outset.  As our agency does considerable business in the machine tool market here, I can tell you this machine will get a great reception in North America.  It will be supported, sold and serviced by Maus USA in Virginia Beach, VA, as yesterday's PR indicated.