NID gears up for holistic engineering course for small,medium enterprises

NID’s Industry Programs and Projects (IP&P),in association with software firm Autodesk,had hosted a number of professors from private and government-funded engineering colleges,including the IITs,for a brainstorming session then.

The soon-to-be course has been termed by engineering professors,notably IIT-Bombay’s mechanical engineering department professor N Ramakrishna,as “the most relevant curriculum in engineering today’s world”.

A report,which has been prepared to explain the course,has clarified the aim for developing such a course in three reasons.

First,ever-changing technology has led to “shortened life cycle of products”,which means that the general trend of products evolving in Indian industries will soon be obsolete. Therefore,the course will pay special attention to small and medium enterprises,which “have provided little or no attention to the growing need for R&D and product development,” explained chairperson of IP&P Shashank Mehta.

The basic idea is to find a way in which products are systematically developed rather than evolve.

Second,“the advancement of information technology has influenced business significantly”,so much so that “the intellectual as well other tangible resources are now sourced from across the world”,the report states.

Third,a consequence of the short life-cycle of products is the lack of time available to develop a product,which means the erstwhile “step-by-step process will not be viable due to time crunch”.

“So far,there were separate managers for separate things but the new realities of production would mean there has to be someone who has a holistic idea0 to handle all the branches at one time,” Mehta said.

The module was developed after looking at various universities abroad that offered a course such as this.

“Given the facilities and expertise that already exist in our engineering colleges…it is evident that an additional course in Product Design Engineering can easily be introduced by sharing existing resources. Over 2,000 AICTE-approved engineering colleges in the country would,therefore,be ideally placed to offer this PG programme,” the report said.

Professors and heads of various engineering professors will likely meet next month to review the course report again before it is adopted. Once adopted,the onus will be on the colleges to approach the AICTE to adopt it formally,Mehta said.

Photography exhibition at NID

The National Institute of Design,Ahmedabad,will on March 3 host a nine-day exhibition of photographs by Prabuddha Dasgupta

The theme of the exhibition,titled “Edge of Faith”,is Latin Catholics,a religious sect in Goa.

The exhibition’s title is the same as that of the book Dasgupta published in 2009.

Dasgupta is credited to be the first Indian photographer to publish a book of nude photographs of urban Indian women.

The NID has planned at least six photography exhibitions in the coming year. The exhibition “Edge of Faith” will be open for all.