Category Archives: Education

Drona Skilling centre

Job-Ready From Day One

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The original article appeared in The Statesman

About 1.5 million engineers graduated from more than 3,500 engineering colleges across India in 2014, but how many of them are really employable in the core industries?

One of the studies (Aspiring Minds, Report 2014) says that only a shocking four to seven per cent of them are actually fit for jobs in the core engineering sectors. An earlier study by the World Bank (2010) showed that employers were not satisfied with the fresh engineering graduates they recruited. Graduates seemed to lack higher order thinking skills: analysing, evaluating and creating.

It is this gap between the existing education system and the actual industry requirement that needs to be met. The sunrise industries of aerospace, defence and electronics need thousands of skilled engineers for design as well as manufacture. Today, while we find many training institutes for software, even computer hardware and networking, there are very few training schools for engineers in core disciplines, especially electronics and aerospace engineering design, and none that include robust processes, documentation and project management.

Currently, the Radel Group has embarked on a novel initiative for the engineering fraternity aimed at mentoring and training them in a real industrial environment on live projects to make them industry-ready. The Drona School of Engineering Practice is a timely and unique initiative that focuses on creating skilled engineers, especially for the electronics, aerospace and defence sectors.

There are several areas where the “Apprenternship” programme offered by Drona differs from other training programmes. The most important one is the mentorship provided by veterans of industry and personal guidance from one of the most respected inventors of India. Another key differentiator is the hands-on work experience and exposure to live projects. The student gets an insight into the design and development cycle of defence and aerospace systems that meet global industry standards of performance, reliability and efficiency. The graduate is trained in systematic quality analysis and documentation processes that are essential for a manufacturing industry, especially in the A&D sector.

 The “Apprentern” is provided soft-skills training and a working knowledge of how an industry operates. A fresh engineering graduate who opts for the Drona programme at Radel goes through a complete transformation of his/her thought process, through which critical, analytical and innovative skills blossom.

Training is provided in written and oral communication skills, business etiquette and time management. The engineer emerges at the end of the course as a confident and competent young and dynamic professional, with enhanced communication skills — in effect, industry-ready. Every industrialist is aware of the time, cost and effort of training fresh engineers. In most organisations, the first few months are spent in training new recruits, with literally no output. The Drona programme takes on the initial training effort of the industry and provides the employer with a trained engineer, ready for the job, so that the employer gets productivity from the new engineer right from day one.

The intensive six-month holistic programme, “Campus2Career”, offers several skilling programmes in embedded systems, avionics, electronics design and related domains comprising all aspects that are required to make a fresh engineer job-ready. The aspiring trainee can select from a variety of subject modules that have combinations of embedded software, embedded electronics design, avionics, mechanical Cad and PCB designs, technical documentation and project management, apart from a basic introduction to various facets of industry (production, planning, admin, HR, etc) and, importantly, soft skills such as verbal and written communication, time management and business etiquette.

The first session of Drona’s “Campus2Career” starts from 1 July 2015.

Aerospace skilling in bangalore

Creating a generation of Design Engineers for Make In India

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Core engineering skill is what every employer in an engineering industry looks for, in a fresh engineering graduate. Most freshers applying for jobs in this sector however, falter at the very first step – the screening test. Many cannot answer even the simplest high-school level question in physics or mathematics. Those that clear this small hurdle, fall at the next – the interview. Again, simple questions stump them. Yet, when questioned about the details, they are not able to explain anything.

Finally most of them admit that the project work was just bought out from small institutions or individuals who make a business out of it. The candidate who is finally hired by the company needs extensive training for 3 to 6 months, before any useful work is produced. Till then, there is zero output from the new employee. This story is true for many engineering industries. This is the kind of talent gap that they face.

As is well-known, the root cause for this is the over-emphasis of our education system, even at the undergraduate level, on rote-learning and theory, at the expense of practical application. Ultimately, this is counterproductive, because an engineer is basically one who has to apply theoretical principles in practice.

Tweet this:“While skilling the technician is important, creating a new generation of product designers is imperative”.

So, what is the solution? The student is helpless, as he is a prisoner of the system. So too are the teachers. It is not easy to overhaul the engineering education system, but solutions have to be found, to unlock the potential of these ‘rough diamonds’ – our engineering graduates, so that our goal of self-reliance in manufacturing through ‘Make in India’ can be achieved.

‘Make in India’ is about manufacturing our own products with IPRs owned by Indian companies. It is not about just manufacturing foreign products ‘under license’. Not long ago, we had Indian companies manufacturing ‘Indian TVs’ with component kits imported from abroad. But now, you have Korean and Japanese brands selling their TVs in India, but almost completely manufactured in China. Hence, the need of the hour is for Indian companies to learn to design and manufacture our own products.

Aerospace skilling in India

So, how do we create a generation of design engineers that can produce innovative new products? Engineering students need to learn the practical application of each theoretical concept, and need inputs on multiple aspects related to the design and manufacture of even the simplest equipment. The very process of thinking, conceptualization, and designing elegant, reliable, rugged  and power efficient products, whether in embedded software or electronic hardware, how to ‘marry’ the two, and adopting a well-documented  design process, making sure that every aspect of the product life cycle is covered.

While these concepts can be explained at brief workshops, it is only through actual hands-on work on a live project that a student or fresh engineer can learn and understand the practical implications of each of them.

While skilling the technician is important, creating a new generation of product designers is imperative. Only this can ensure a sustainable and meaningful ‘Make in India’. Radel’s new venture ‘Drona School of Engineering practice’ does precisely this.

Indian Aerospace skilling

Make In India – But who will skill our Engineering Graduates?

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The USD 400 billion opportunity

The catch-phrase today in Indian Industry is ‘Make in India’. The estimated domestic demand for Electronics products alone, is of the order of USD 400 billion by 2020. Every entrepreneur in the manufacturing sector is aspiring to take a slice of this pie.

The Challenges

However, if Make in India is to become a reality, there has to be a focus on the product manufacturing sector. China today, is a giant economic power, because it is a manufacturing hub for almost everything across the globe. Unless we are self-sufficient in Manufacturing, we can never hope to match, leave alone overtake, our neighbour.To achieve this, as has been highlighted by many experts, several areas need urgent attention – such as our infrastructure, labour laws and tax laws. But by far the most important initiative needed is in making our engineers employable. This is the greatest hurdle in the realisation of the goal of ‘Make in India’. Without competent engineers to drive the programme, how can the campaign even take off? How will we create our own products?

One step further – from Make in India to Design in India

In the Aerospace and Defence sector, how will India transform from being one of the largest importers of defence equipment, into being self-sufficient in defence products and then onwards to become an exporter? We need to make our engineering graduates skilled not only in Manufacturing but in Design.

Indian Aerospace skilling, grajnarayan

 

Tweet this: We need to not just Make in India, but Create in India, Design in India and Innovate in India, so as to create and own all the intellectual property ourselves.

For this, we need to skill our engineers not just as computer operators but as intelligent designers and engineers in practice.

Why do we need to skill engineers?

There has been a lot of emphasis of late, on ‘Skilling India’. Most of the initiatives under this program are focused on skilling the workforce at the technician level – electrician, machine operator, etc. There is no recognition of the crying need for our fresh engineering graduates to be made job-ready with hard-core engineering domain skills. Reports suggest that out of about 1.5 million engineers graduating from more than 3500 engineering colleges across India in 2014, only a shocking 4 to 7 % of engineers are actually fit for jobs in the core engineering sectors.

Tweet this: Studies also indicate that employers are not satisfied with the fresh graduates they recruit, and that ‘Graduates seem to lack higher-order thinking skills (analyzing, evaluating and creating)’.

There is a huge demand from the core engineering industries for practical engineers who have hands-on experience. We need to close this large gap between the existing education system and the actual industry requirement.

Today, while we find many training institutes for software, even computer hardware (assembly & troubleshooting) and networking, there are very few training schools for engineers in core engineering disciplines, especially Electronics and Aerospace Engineering Design, and none that include robust processes, documentation and project management. Industries spend several months training them on these essential skills.

In view of the need faced by Engineering students and the Indian Manufacturing Industry, Radel (a well-known name in the Aerospace and Consumer Electronics sectors) has embarked on a novel initiative – Drona, school for engineering practice, that mentors and trains graduates and fresh industry recruits in a real industrial environment with exposure to exciting live projects, to make them industry-ready.