VALUE ADD
Engineering works of art
PUJA S. NAVIN
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A product is only as successful as its design will allow it to be. Engineers must take this reality into account and focus on design excellence.
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DESIGNING DREAMS: Engineers at work in the CAD section at KGISL, Coimbatore. Photo: K. Ananthan
A search on the naukri.com jobsite for design engineers throws up some very promising opportunities. A leading car manufacturing company wants a design engineer for design activities like solid modelling, surface modelling and drafting of automotive parts.
He or she should be a B.E./Diploma in mechanical, automobile or production engineering and have a sound experience in 3D modelling software.
In another job posting, Godrej & Boyce Ltd. is looking for a design engineer, who will introduce new product concepts and design new products both for existing and unexplored markets considering manufacturability, reliability and serviceability.
He should also be able to modify existing products to conform to international standards while keeping the same design for domestic markets. An air conditioning company is looking for an R&D engineer to develop new models and improve products to satisfy a variety of clients.
Manufacturing will be the driving force of the Indian economy, according to the Manufacturing Competitiveness Report, April 2005, released by FICCI recently. And spearheading this growth will be newer and better designs.
Design lies at the heart of any change, says V. R. Chander, Executive Director, CADD Centre that provides training on various engineering software to engineering students. Five years ago, while a mobile phone enabled you to talk when you were on the move, its battery had to be recharged after every four to five hours, it was a heavy instrument, it did not have games and reminders and calculators. But with every successive version, newer and sleeker designs with added functions such as emails, ringtones, reservation status check facilities, bank account check facility and of course the camera, MMS and bluetooth are being built in. Not to mention slimmer and lighter designs.
Why only the mobile phone, take any product, from the airbus which is now a double-decker aircraft with more capacity, to Ratan Tata's dream car project to build a car for one lakh, you come across the importance of design.
"Innovative designs are simple, attractive and use lightweight materials," says A. Senthilvel, Technical manager, CADD.
Earlier products used to be designed, now the design looks at the entire product lifecycle engineering, which includes concept design, that is, a product is made on the paper, modelled through a software and then engineering analysis is carried out to check how viable is the product. Next comes tooling development followed by part manufacturing, assembly, delivery and service. Manufacturing is getting distributed across the globe, explains Mr. Chander.
For example, if GE wants to manufacture a washing machine, it will distribute various parts of the manufacturing to different countries, they can give the task of designing the agitator to India, of developing the electronics to Far Eastern countries, split the task where talent is the best and then assemble and deliver it as the GE product.
Going further, the trend that is catching up is Collaborative Product commerce and driving this trend is the revolution in Computer-Aided Designing and Drafting.
Here design engineers sitting in various centres across the globe can act as suppliers. They can design a product using design software such as PROE, CATIA and then test and analyse the models developed by them under the conditions specified by the buyer.
The buyer can also suggest alterations to the models to fit his requirements, and in this way, interacting through the web will drive factories that are online.
Hence, for those with an interest and passion, this is a challenging opportunity.
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