The Indian way of Engineering Research

Hi all,

This is a topic that is very close to my heart. By education, I am an engineer and have been in this field for three years. The need of research has been always downplayed by the indian engineering community. I wanted to know the reasons for this. India was labelled not to have produced any worthwhile real engineering products for quite a long time. The exceptions being the space and nuclear technology which was born out of the hardwork of really exceptionally people ranging from Homi J Bhaba to Dr. Abdul Kalam. These two fields have improved the quality of life of a average indian to a great extent for sure. But why havent this kind of engineering marvels havent happened in other parts of engineering, science, humanities and social sciences.

I have always wondered the difference in the working style of European and Indian Scientists. I believe I have got a hint of what it is. Indians think in a more complex way compared to the Europeans. Indians in general are believed to think in a two dimensional way, which essentially means to alter two parameters under study to reach the optimum. The advantage being that the path is always the most efficient and costs the minimum. The disadvantage being the path to be travelled everytime with a certain level of uncertaininty as the effect of the individual parameter is not evident after the study is conducted.

 The problem actually starts when scaling is accounted. This is a huge problem in engineering. It is the basic P=nP problem of mathematics. ie if a problem ( P ) is solved, can n times the problem P be solved in the same way and is it feasible. In our case, it has been easy for us, humans to think in case of two dimensions. What will happen when the problem to be solved is a multiobjective multiparameter problem. I would like to explain this with a small example.

       First problem       ( P )   : Making  a tea.

      Second problem ( nP )  : Making a full fledged sumptuous Indian meal.

Now if both problems are categorised to be a food processing problem, then a person who is able to make a tea should be able to make a full fledged sumptuous Indian meal. I leave it to the readers for the rest to be thought about.

The case with the European way of thinking and analysing the problems in more linear.

ie they assume that one single parameter affects one output. In this way, they learn more about each parameter and its effects. This helps in the long term for various reasons.

Now to the point of how these affect the way research in india gets affected. The Indian community has always failed a number of times in many engineering practices as they have taken more than their capability to handle at a time. This is not to tarnish the great Indian scientific community. There are always exceptions to anything in this world. The great engineering Indian Community has always been dominated by these people.

Although this, on one hand is good and to be proud of, it leads to a situation, where the problems always have to be taken to these exceptionally talented people to be solved. This is the reason IISc, IITs and IIMs are always called upon to solve the problems faced by the Indian society. They definitely provide great solutions. But the implementation of these solutions to the field is definitely a great challenge in itself just because of the term "FIELD".  India with its diversity is, on any given day, a huge nightmare for engineers to handle. 

So, does this mean we have to copy the European way of thinking. DEFINITELY NOT.

Then what would really be the solution. For me, that is a million dollar question.

I would like to get some points from the readers on my views on this topic.

The ideas that are presented are my personal and are bound to change without any notification.

HR Practices in Indian Manufacturing Companies

The best company in the field of manufacturing (L&T) in India has done this. It has not informed the people whom they have recruited from the best colleges of India that they might have to work in their sister concerns which are Wseperate business units and they will not come under the tag of L&T. They are working in companies that are seen far below than other companies.The HR have not taken care of their needs.With all these in the background the company's chief is asking the students to take a career in manufacturing.
Without providing a good work enviro and a good work culture on what basis do these people ask the young generation to take careers in manufacturing. Instead of blaming the software companies in taking the young talent,let the dons create better work culture.
If not, it is not the young generation which is going to be affected much but their own concerns.
I would like to hear from the dons for my questions.

Root Cause Analysis of Ragging

''CHENNAI: Alleging that he was ragged and thrown from the fourth floor of the hostel building by some senior students, an engineering student has moved the Madras High Court seeking a direction to the State government to pay an interim compensation of Rs.5 lakh for treatment.''-Hindu dated 03,Feb, 2010.

I belive the root cause of Ragging in India in Colleges of all kind is the condition prevailing in the school system where the interaction between the various classes of students are kept to a minimum quoting reasons such as distraction from study and many others. This might look a little odd on the first glance. Let me bring out my view on this.
Teachers of today's school system believe that if they keep the students of various classes seperate, they can avoid all the problems that can occur between two people on their first interaction. It is a very old and well understood concept of team building that happens which will include the stage of finding fault with others and small skirmishes which is more common in a friendship. To avoid this, the school system, avoids having interaction between the students of various classes.
This only leads to a situation of ragging in college. Once the students are in college, and 90 percentage of the time in hostels, the students dont have a clue of things to come as there is no one to guide them in this phase on interacting with other students who are elder and younger to them. Even the wardens and lecturers feel these are petty things that are unavoidable. This leads to the situation where the senior student, only to show their dominance and due to the situation where they dont know how to start to interact with their younger counterparts, take part in ragging. This is more relevant in the rural scenario where still the way of life is more towards the survival of the fittest in physical terms.
The solution to this will be, that the students are allowed to interact more during their budding school days, more often with their senior and junior batches so that they dont form walls of superiority among them. This leads us to the situation of asking the ability of the teachers to bring this change.
That is a huge question which the so called scholars and bureaucrats and IAS officers, who occupy the seats of the Education Departments of the Government have to answer.
In an industrial setting, we would stay that an untrained workforce ( Teachers) in an improper work place (school) using an improper method (education system) is not to be blamed for a faulty product ( students).
Let the scholars and IAS officers of the Government find the root cause and then take some real corrective measures which will give a long lasting result.

5 Why? (Common in Problem solving for finding root cause problems in Industrial Setup)

1.Why ragging takes place?.
Senior students on interacting with junior students take part in ragging as they dont know how to interact.
2.Why do they dont know how to interact?.
They have not come under such situation.
3.Why have they not come under such interaction?.
Because they were avoided to interact in school days.
4. Why are they avoided to interact in school days?
The schooling systems believes it might lead to problems in the short run and want to avoid them.
5. Why do the schooling systems do this?.
Because they are not trained to counter these issues.

Solution
Proper training to be given in areas of child care, human psyschology, building up of young minds.

I would like to get some feedback on my thoughts and would like to correct my shortcoming in understanding this issue.
Photo http://devainet.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/himg.jpg..Hope they dont sue me for this...

Future of Machining

Hi all,

I am a guy interested in the art and science of machining.

For those of you, who are not familiar of this topic, it is a

manufacturing process,which converts rawmaterial into

a finished product by removing unwanted material, more

like the art of sculpting. To put in the simplest of terms,

it is like cutting your apple. The only difference is instead

of apple, we have metal, and instead of a steel knife, we

have a much harder and tougher knife.

I am writing this blog to get to know people who are also

searching an answer for the question that I have.

" What is the future of machining?"

The first question that will come to anyone's mind will be

what is the need to put in so much of thought now?

I am asking this question when the world is experiencing one

of the worst economic crisis the world has ever seen. It is

said that everypart of a thing that we use in our day to day

life, has been influenced by machinining process in the course

of it's manufacturing. Either directly or indirectly.

Today we have the idea of electric drive vehicles, drive by wire

systems and many advanced hybrid vehicle concepts. My question

is what will happen to the practice of machining. I am sure that

it will be absurd that machining will vanish from the face of earth.

But I also strongly believe that machining will not be able to have it's

share of the global manufacturing economic pie as before and hence

the global economy will undergo a complete sea change.

In the due course, I will add many articles that I had come across.

I asked this question to a professor who had involved himself in the

art and science of machining, hailing from Aachen, Germany and he

had aptly put it this way.

"I think metal cutting will not disappear from production. May be that the amount of chips will drop, but the application of cutting

will become more sophisticated"

I call upon all those engineers, machinists who are fond of machining and who

are interested in the future of machining to come up with their views on this

topic.