Enthusiastic participation by engineers & technicians
Anyone who walked into the Ashok Leyland Technical Center in north Chennai on August 8 and 9 would have experienced engineering and cutting-edge technology with all five senses. The Center was holding a two-day mega event titled “Technology Day” as an engagement and knowledge enhancement initiative for engineers.
The year 2013-14 was a watershed one for the Indian commercial vehicle industry, and Ashok Leyland also felt the pinch of the slowdown. The leadership, however, focused on ‘Opportunity in Chaos’, as the company Managing Director, Mr. Vinod K. Dasari, described it, and started a slew of initiatives to restructure and prepare the organization for the future.
As part of this initiative, Dr. N. Saravanan, Head of Engineering, and his senior team created a platform to encourage engineering talent; that would help them generate and share exceptional ideas and create engineering fervor within teams.
Technology Day was started as an initiative to encourage a culture of innovation and celebrate engineering ideas and technological milestones. The event comprises seminars where engineers present technical papers and an exposition that showcases technology milestones achieved at the Technical Center.
The event is nurtured by the entire leadership team of Product Development. Young engineers get coached by the experts to write technical papers; teams of senior leaders assess and shortlist the papers for presentation on the final day; and technical experts participate as juries for judging the technical presentations. The entire leadership at the Technical Center puts personal stake in the success of the event.
Technology Day 2014 was organized on August 8 and 9 with its key focus on ‘Future Trends in Automotive Materials’. The Chief Guest on the occasion, Dr. Homi C. Bhedwar, Head Asia-Pacific & Regional Technology Director, DuPont, enthralled the audience with his keynote address on DuPont’s innovation journey. He focused on the need for future-oriented sustainable solutions for automobiles with reduced environmental impact, and proposed solutions that combine light-weight renewably sourced materials with bio-fuels.
Out of a total of 82 abstracts submitted by the engineers, 15 papers were presented before the judges at the event on a range of topics like Alternate Sustainable Materials, New Technologies for Drive Trains, Durability Evaluations, Numerical Simulations for Vehicle Dynamics, Advances in Engines Technology, etc. In parallel, supplier partners organized seminars on advanced metals, materials, composites and future technologies for the engineers at the Technical Center.
Dr. Homi and Dr. Saravanan inaugurated the exposition arranged jointly by the Materials Engineering Department (MED) and the Regulations Department. Various supplier partners, including BASF India, Bayer, DIC Asia Pacific, DuPont, Gerdau Steels, Gulf Oil, HaritaFehrer, Henkel Adhesives, Interface Solutions, Metlock, Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metals, Saint Gobain, Sandvik Asia, WABCO India, Global Automotive Research Center and ARAI participated in the Technology Day functions.
Mr. Vinod Dasari presided over the valedictory program. Appreciating the structure and innovative intent of the Technology Day, he emphasized that innovation, both in-house and by the company supplier partners, will increasingly help differentiate Ashok Leyland in the highly competitive Indian CV industry.
Mr. Dasari felicitated supplier partners and gave awards to winners of paper presentations. To recognize the engineers who have pushed the frontiers of design through their patents, a new category of awards, “Innovent”, was instituted by Mr. N.V. Balachandran.
Dr. Saravanan further created excitement for the engineers by announcing grant of seed money for four technology incubation projects. These highly innovative projects were cherry-picked for seed funding out of over 70 proposals from the engineers. He announced that each year two-three such projects will be incubated. He also said that cultural transformation requires sustained efforts over a period of time to eventually result in the desired outcome, and the Technology Day is one such effort towards the kind of innovative culture the company is determined to create.
Here are excerpts from Dr. Saravanan’s address:
Over my years of work in product development in the US and in Ashok Leyland, there is no doubt in my mind that we have exceptional engineering talent. The challenge before us is to create an engineering and innovation culture which nurtures this talent on a sustained basis and empowers every engineer to develop a sense of ownership and desire to make a difference.
Through forums like the Technology Day we want to nurture pride in engineering and at the same time raise the bar of how our engineers present their ideas and get the caliber and confidence to participate in national and international seminars to share and bring global engineering excellence.
We are aware that the CV industry in India is going through one of the most disconcerting periods with a sluggish economy on the one hand and, at the same time, stiff competition eyeing the same diminished industry volume, on the other. In this scenario, excellence of design, frugal engineering and innovation are the core differentiators for any player. I am confident that great ideas would flow from each and every engineer through such forums, and many concepts will be successfully implemented to give Ashok Leyland the required edge.