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On engineering services outsourcing
Engineering Technology (ET) Services expected to become the next big wave.
Opportunity for core disciplines to use their skills.
Salaries to match IT sector, say professionals from the field.
THIS IS an opportunity for core engineering disciplines such as mechanical, civil, electrical and electronics, automobile, aeronautical, metallurgical and even naval architecture engineering students. Driven by the high quality, low cost and highly skilled engineering talent available in the country, a range of engineering services, R&D activities are being outsourced to India.
Observes Prashanth Chundhuri, Manager, Corporate Marketing, Neilsoft, an engineering services company based at Pune: "While the IT outsourcing was an early starter, engineering services outsourcing was slow as sharing product development details required more trust in the vendors and involved intellectual property rights issues. But now the field is opening up and the major drivers are improvements in bandwidth capabilities and engineering collaboration tools.
What services can be outsourced?
Legacy diagrams - Historical conversion of engineering drawings from paper to computer aided designs.
Automotive, industrial machinery and tools design as is being undertaken by Neilsoft. They are also into construction engineering segment. This segment involves plant engineering for petrochemical plants, pharmaceutical plants etc.
Electronic circuitry design such as printed circuit boards, VLSI designs.
Metallurgical designs for foundry, casting, etc.
Development of Geographical Information systems for public utilities such as power, telecom networks, sewage systems, electrical power stations.
Outsourcing product development and research and development activities to India.
There are three models at work for outsourcing
Captive Development Centres - Companies that are not comfortable outsourcing to third party vendors or want to do core design and R&D work in-house will prefer to take the captive route. These are Microsoft, Intel, Cadence, Texas Instruments, IBM, Novell and SAP. They have hired Indian engineering talent to set up their own design teams.
Engineering Services divisions of Indian IT giants such as Wipro, Infosys, TCS have a team of designers catering to a particular market segment.
Small focused players like Neilsoft that are offering only design automation, 3D modelling, engineering analysis engineering outsourcing services to a wide range of clients.
Career opportunities
Says Raghavendra Prasad, Director, PSG-STEP, students have the "opportunity to use their core engineering talent". Product ideas may be conceived in the US with actual design undertaken by teams working in India, he says. The components may be manufactured by mainland China and Taiwan and assembled at US. The actual brain ware is in India, he adds. Students could move beyond writing codes to providing value added services. The salary and benefits would match those of the IT sector.
The skill sets required for a career in the Engineering Technology Services is an engineering degree or a diploma with knowledge of a related engineering software tools such as AutoCAD, Catia, Pro/E, I-DEAS or Ansys.
Puja S Navin
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