On the eve of the 75th Independence Day of India, Indian metrology manufacturer Accurate Gauging & Instruments organised an event to bridge the gap between industry and academia, which will eventually help the students in engineering industry ready.
Skilled manpower is one of the major challenges faced by the global manufacturing sector, and the initiative by Accurate is expected to bring great results, especially for students who are from rural areas of India.
In an exclusive interview with Machine Maker, Vikram Salunkhe, Managing Director of Accurate Gauging & Instruments talks in detail about the initiative. “In light of Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav where the entire country is celebrating 75 years of Independence we planned and conducted this event which will help the students become g industry ready. We had faculties across Pune University visiting today and discussed collaborating with them to develop a curriculum which will align with the current global industry requirements”, said Vikram Salunkhe.
Founded by the Late Vilasrao Salunkhe a pioneer in the manufacturing of Measuring Instruments and Gauges in India all the way back in 1963, Accurate Sales & Services is now a global player in the field of industrial metrology. The company has been providing precise Metrology solutions which are delivered to various industry segments such as Automobile, Engineering, Aerospace, Railways, Energy, Oil and Gas, Medical Engineering, Government Sector, and Technical Education.
“Incidentally we are also celebrating 60 years of Accurate”, said Vikram Salunkhe. Accurate has successfully served the demanding measuring requirements for applications in Powertrains, Sheet metal, High precision parts in Aerospace, Power Turbines, Rail Bogies and so on. Accurate is based out of Pune and is one of the companies from India worldwide that provide complete metrological and customized solutions to their customers.
Accurate over many years has led its mission to training individuals and students to skill and upskill benefitting both academia and industry. The new initiative will make these efforts to new levels where Accurate will share its expertise with educational institutions s including industry-oriented courses, like teaching how the advanced CMMs and other metrology instruments or heavy machinery which is not available currently in the academic curriculum. He further added that there is a huge gap between what we learn in the university or ITI to what we practice in the industry.
We put a lot of thought into how Accurate can give back to society and global manufacturing, playing the primary role of bringing quality. So being a stakeholder in this learning and growing society, we thought of strengthening the skills of students, as well as upskilling professionals who are already working across the industry
With online education breaking barriers, the new initiative of Accurate will be developed in partnership with Maharashtra Knowledge Corporation Limited (MKCL). “We at Accurate as one of the responsible leaders in this sector took the initiative of bridging this gap by coming together with academia and the user industry, giving birth to a platform which can cater to this need of the hour. Thankfully, MKCL has also extended their support to partner for this initiative by offering its learning management system”, said Vikram Salunkhe.
Accurate along with the faculties will be creating content for engineering professionals in the area of quality, ranging from basics like the use of simple hand tools to 2-3 axis measurement devices, advanced metrology equipment available globally, and further use of the MKCL pl platform to expand their geographic territory seamlessly with their existing infrastructure. This will become the first part of the training where the individuals will learn practically and theoretically.
The second part will focus more on assessing the skills of the person and then giving him feedback as to what are the gaps between his knowledge and the industry requirement in order to help him upgrade himself and be industry ready. “What we want to achieve is that when such an engineering graduate or diploma holder walks onto the shopfloor, they should have something more to offer than just a degree. This summarizes the sole objective of this initiative in brief”, added Vikram Salunkhe.
Talking about the learnings from across the manufacturing world, Vikram Salunkhe shared that the world of technology has become very dynamic. After 4 years of studying in college when an engineer enters the industry after graduation, the world has changed in terms of technology and shop floors in the manufacturing area. The gap between these two will always be there unless an initiative like Accurate comes up and reaches a larger set of the audience”, said Mr Salunkhe. In western countries, such initiatives are being carried out constantly. Their emphasis is on knowledge and skill so the learning aspect booms up rather than just teaching the parameters of formal education.
Unlike the western countries, one of the severe challenges that India faces is that of the Urban and Rural divide in terms of infrastructure and these groups of rural engineers generally aspire to go into manufacturing. There needs to be a way to train them and make them capable of working in the industry. The second big challenge that we face as Indians is language. India is a country full of diversity and has as many as 21 official languages and so English cannot be the only way to train manufacturing professionals. “Accurate wants to create a platform for someone who is not very good with the English language and wishes to learn metrology, they should have the platform and the equipment with proper guidance in their own language”, added Vikram Salunkhe
All the curriculums under this initiative will be carried out in as many regional languages as possible. “Analysing such grassroots-level problems and coming up with an ACCURATE solution is what ACCURATE as a company stands for”, said Vikram Salunkhe. Initially Accurate is planning the launch this initiative in Pune, in collaboration with the Savitribai Phule University, where they are getting good responses from the board members of the university. Once the first leg of the initiative completes, Accurate plans to take this to the national level slowly to ensure the benefit is reaching to people across the country, especially students from rural areas.
Vikram Salunkhe applauded Savitribai Phule Pune University’s introduction of Honors Degrees in different industry streams, which he believes is the way to go forward for India and soon will not be far behind Manufacturing giants like the US and Germany. Accurate has been working very closely not just with colleges affiliated with Pune University but also with other colleges in Maharashtra. Accurate generously allows all study tour visits and also has introduced small courses catering to subjects like GDMP and CMM.
Leading by example, Vikram Salunkhe proudly shared an anecdote expressing his joy when recently a girl coming from a rural area bagged a job in a big MNC from Chakan just because she had a 3-day training course of CMM certificate from Accurate along with her academics. This is what Accurate intends to do and turn it into a trend that every candidate walking into the industry must carry special skills required by the industry as the degree earned by him becomes secondary after a point in the industry and only his skillset is the primary key to moving forward.
The product range of Accurate includes a wide range of 3D Coordinate Measuring Machines which offer innovative measuring ranges from an economical bench-top CMM for Technical Education to one of the largest Gantry CMMs. Accurate also offers custom design and built solutions for measurements with its products offering custom gauging. Another special package for MQC Laboratories is the EDUCELL which provides a comprehensive range of 3D CMM, measuring instruments, custom gauging and measuring services to the Indian industry as well as exporting it to more than 27 countries across the globe.
The Government of India has awarded Accurate, the DSIR National Award for R&D in 3D CMM as well as the National Technology Award in 2013, for Accurate Aramax type CMM. In continuation of this journey of providing excellent products and services, Accurate offers EDUCELL, a special package for MQC Laboratories of engineering and Technical Institutes. The EDUCELL package is already successfully delivered to many Engineering Colleges in Maharashtra.
ACCURATE also provides services like component inspection services, offline programming of machines and calibration of machines across the industry. Also, Accurate has an efficient and established way of minimising risk on the shop floor by conducting regular inspections. Accurate provides inspection, measurement services and sub-assemblies as per the requirements of the customers along with Industry 4.0-ready 3D CMMs.
