Geared up to go

The most striking thing about automobile engineering is that there is really no one entity called “an automobile engineer”. Though a few institutes in the country do offer BE/BTech courses in automobile engineering, the biggest bulk of the engineers hired by top carmakers in India tend to be mechanical engineers. Electrical and electronics engineers and metallurgists are the others who contribute significantly to a car company.

All of these people may be classified as “engineers in the automobile industry” with sub-sections of specialistion within that broad swathe — material treatment, electronics (for control units), designing (CAD), logistics, supply management etc. Graduate engineers undergo training — one year for companies like Maruti and Honda — during which time they will observe all the processes of carmaking, handling small tasks under supervision. A year later, the firm decides where to assign them.

“A college teaches theory, but each organisation has to make the new hires compatible to the business,” says Praveen Paranjape, operations head (manufacturing) at Honda Siel Cars Ltd. “They must understand the making of the car, marketing, supply chain, finance, R&D.”

An engineer thus develops the skills of a technician, planner and administrator. The roles are symbiotic, e.g. a quality review will mean going to the shop floor and looking at the cars, not just getting through a lot of files.

Observing the process on the plant floor is very important, even if an engineer later spends much of his/her time sitting at a table, designing a car with software. “During its making, a car passes through several stations, and the person manning a station has, say, 68 seconds in which to work on a car. Every second is accounted for,” says Zakir Ahmed, an assistant manager at Hyundai in charge of assembly improvement, with a mechanical engineering degree from Adhiyaman Engineering College, Bangalore. Someone creating the car on the drawing board needs to know the process of assembly and streamline the design for optimal result with minimal effort.

“Every new car needs engineers from various disciplines to bring it from drawing board to the factory,” says Piyush Agarwal, a mechanical engineer from Government Engineering College, Jabalpur, who has been with Maruti Suzuki for 12 years. Afterwards, “research and customer feedback would keep the engineers involved”.

As of now, an engineer in the Indian car industry depends on the employer for a chance to really bite into the subject, because what is taught in the institutes is not tailored to industry demands. “Hyundai is my third job, and I could face the interviewers confidently only because of my work experience,” says Ahmed. “The theories taught in college were decades behind their time.”

Compare this, he says, to an engineer in Germany, who gets to drive the best cars in the world as part of the study programme. “The lack of exposure and the old syllabi are the two big hurdles.”

However, with training, it is possible to acquire cutting-edge expertise. Agarwal, who specialises in engine design and development, has been to Japan many times to work with Suzuki engineers. The scope for such an engineer is not limited to India.

One’s career growth may be faster if the basic degree is from an IIT. “Our undergraduate programme in mechanical engineering covers internal combustion engines, which can lead to a job with a major carmaker,” says Dr Anjan Ray, IIT Delhi faculty member for mechanical engineering. “In the Master’s programme in thermal engineering, some courses are related to engines.”

Employment is not restricted to OEMs (original equipment manufacturers, i.e. the carmakers). “An engineer can work in companies that supply suspension or steering systems to carmakers,” says Paranjape.

As for professional growth, the sky is pretty much the limit in the right company. “We send people abroad for training and to work as expat employees,” Paranjape says. “There is a lot of knowhow exchange. Somebody who needs to work with robots gets specialised training.”

Robots, cars and futuristic designs — can a job get much more exciting than that?

Author: Sanchita Guha

Date: 21st Oct. 2009

For further details related courses and colleges please click below:

Related courses and colleges