Altair India and DesignTech Systems, age old partners in technology and optimisation solutions, inked an MoU with the Science and Technology Park to set up an engineering centre of excellence (CoE) in Pune for providing better skilled engineers.

 

With the industry moving into its next phase, incorporating new driving trends, the education of people needed in the industry is lagging behind starkly. To right this industry faced problem, US-based Altair Engineering announced a collaborative effort with its partner in India, DesignTech Systems, and the Science and Technology Park, an institute supported by the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India, to support the advancement of the GoI’s Skill India programme. The objective of this skill enhancement programme by the Government, is to enable a large number of Indian youth to take up industry-relevant product design skill training that will help them in securing a better livelihood. The agreement to establish an Engineering Centre of Excellence (CoE) for research, innovation and skill building, is therefore expected to benefit a large community of students, academic institutes and overall industry.

 

Dilip Band, President of Science and Technology Park, Pune says, “This COE is expected to complement current courses undertaken by the state institutions, aiming at bridging the gap between quality of vocational engineering skills of students and skill level expected of them by the industry. This would enable students to be industry ready thereby giving them an edge for better compensation and helping industry in saving time in re-training the candidate thereby increasing their efficiency. We look forward to this collaboration for the benefit of all.”

 

The engineering Centre of Excellence will encompass a product design lab,an additive manufacturing lab, design validation lab, manufacturing assessment lab, flow and thermal lab, signal processing and communication lab for IoT, control  systems and mechatronics lab for IoT.

 

Pavan Kumar, Vice President South Asia & MD, Altair India, says “We are happy to collaborate with the Science and Technology Park in Pune. These initiatives are designed to use technological solutions and resources to better align technical institutes with industry requirements – by getting diploma and graduate students who are industry ready, and boost entrepreneurship in these budding engineers. Altair offers many programs to foster and promote the engineering discipline by providing real-world experience and skills.”

 

Speaking on the occasion, Vikas Khanvelkar, Chairman & MD, DesignTech Systems opined “In a globalised, technology driven, evolving world of product design & innovation, Altair Engineering in collaboration with DesignTech Systems Ltd, intends to propose the Altair Centre of excellence for research, innovation and skill building with focus on enhancing student exposure to best practices of design, engineering and consideration to enhance possibilities of their employment. The Centre of Excellence can also extend engineering consultancy to small and medium scale manufacturing industries as classified under the Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises.”

 

There is urgent need for right-skilling

 

Pavan Kumar, VP South Asia & MD, Altair India, shares his views on why industries need institutions such as CoE Pune.

 

Educational institutions are pumping out many engineers today, but, unfortunately they are lacking in the right qualifications. The burden of then right-skilling them is placed upon the industry, where a lot of time is wasted and money is spent. This need for right-skilling is something that we at Altair and our long-standing partner DesignTech Systems have observed. There is an opinion that institutions should teach things that are applicable in real life. However, this is not possible without teaching the fundamentals - that is the physics - and then teaching its applications. Theoretical knowledge and basics are often understood in an incomplete manner.

 

The industry, however, requires quick methods and solutions and not necessarily the fundamental physics. Tools used in the industry will spew answers or solutions based on what is fed to them. They are essentially input-output tools.  The gap between theoretical fundamentals and the industry-required knowledge needs to be bridged. With a great age dividend like India’s, where 65 per cent of the population is under 29, not tackling employment, skill and education issues can cause a huge socio-economic problem. 

 

We are not just focusing on the engineering students that are passing out. We hope that the CoE will also benefit the MSME’s in the region.  Taking the example of the auto industry, the shift from ICE to different forms of power will increase the role of suppliers. Therefore the suppliers base and the SMEs have to play a vital role in meeting the OEMs requirements. The SMEs and the supply base will have to adopt technologies which they didn’t have to up until this point. OEMs used to literally provide the SMEs with a drawing of the required product. Now they provide a specification sheet leaving the SMEs to model the product by themselves, which is a 

huge change. 

 

The government of India is spending a lot of money on skill gaps. The current government’s focus has been re-skilling people and driving employment. We have been helping to refine this over a period of time. The CoE plan has been scrutinised by various experts of the STPs then the areas that need the most reskilling have been determined. The labs that have been decided are the ones that make the most sense. Altair India’s role here would be to provide the complete gamut of what we can achieve.  Altair technology today can go right from conceptualising the product or industrial design perspective to valiating the product for various physics that is involved. Our technology can validate the durability or strength, and even test for flaws, unnecessary noises and vibrations which is an indication of an unsafe product. We can extend safety studies into the domain of communication with IoT and sensorisation becoming part of the game. In today's world everything has to be able to communicate with every thing else. Therefore we have a lab dedicated towards IoT and communications. The next major thing is additive manufacturing. This taps into the concept of no-constraints based design. This is useful for simulation testing where tools aim to mimic the actual test.