In 1975 i joined BHPV as chief of R&D. Prior to my joining BHPV there was a small nucleus 3 post graduate engineers. Soon after I joined BHPV there was a change in the top management. I was reporting directly to the chairman and managing director and I had to wait for the appointment of chairman and managing director. After the new CMD took over he called me and asked me to go ahead and recruit M.Tech's from IIT's. We went to IIT, Madras,and IIT, Kharagpur. From these institutes we selected 8 M.Techs.4 M.Techs were from Chemical Engineering, 2 from manufacturing and 2 from welding. Till R&D building was constructed we worked from one single room. Our work shop was the the workshop of Training Centre which had primitive facilities. Within one and half years we had our own building. BHPV is a vast organisation with excellent fabrication facilities. But I soon realised that we cannot depend on the main manufacturing facilities for our prototype fabrication as the main manufacturing facility was not keen to divert their main machinery and workforce for our work. I argued with the CMD for our work shop. He granted us the finance to construct a work shop. The work shop and one shaping machine, one radial drilling machine,one milling machine, one lathe and several welding machines.Training centre sent us some trainee welders. We took them trained them again to meet our needs. When we needed shaping machine operators, milling machine operators, drillers and machinists the troublesome workers from the main shops were transferred to R&D work shop. Since we had no choice we accepted them. But within a short time we realised that these workers were really good. They were labelled"bad " because they always challenged established practices. We needed such people who can challenge existing practices.
In two years we had about 16 M.Techs in our group. 4 engineers formed the Chemical Engineering group, 4 formed the Cryogenic Engineering group, 4 formed the Manufacturing Technology Development group and 4 welding Technology Development group.
Each research engineer was allowed to work on 3 projects simultaneously and one project of his choice.Two engineers can join together and work on project when the project was big. When the project involved a prototype construction, the team may consist of one from chemical engineering who was responsible for process design, one was from product development to select material and method of manufacture and from welding technology group to welding methods and supervise welding. Thus a project team was a blend of various expertises.
Projects were selected based upon the organisation's need. We were constantly in touch with Sales to find out which ou the tenders the could not respond because of lack of technology. If such rejections are many, we would consider developing the missing technology. For example, at one time Sales could not respond to the customer inquiry for Titanium Heat exchangers. Acquiring the technology from abroad was expensive. Hence we initiated a programme to develop welding Titanium. We also went inside the workshop to find out the difficulties they are facing in manufacturing and initiated development projects to overcome this lacuna.
I also decided that at least a part of R&D expenses must be earned by accepting contract research. We approached, Defence Research & Develpment Orgniasation(DRDO)' Defence Metallurgical Research Laboratory(DMRL), Mishra Dhatu Nigam(MIDHANI)etc. for sponsoring projects. We were successful in obtaining a contract from DRDO to establish a manufacturing process for Titanium Gas Bottles for PRITHVY and TRISUL missiles. This project when completed successfully resulted in obtaining continuous orders of few crore Rupees. Similarly with DMRL for developing Armour welding and MIDHANI for Maraging steel welding.In these projects the entire development cost was funded by the respective organisations and also ensured that future business comes to BHPV. One of the contract clauses we insisted upon was that once the development was completed any hardware resulting from our development should be offered to us for series manufacture. If it was not aggreable, we were not we were not willing to take up contract research.
Another contract research we accepted was to design and develop compact heat exchangers for TEJAS supersonic aircraft being designed by Aeronautical Development Agency. The fabrication of the heat exchanger involved vacuum brazing of aluminium parts. In imported vacuum brazing furnace would have costed several lakhs of Rupees which neither ADA can afford nor BHPV can afford. We realised that a vacuum furnace is nothing but an externally pressurised vessel to contain vacuum and some heating elements and controllers to maintain predetermined temperature. We looked within BHPV and found that we were good at creating and maintaining vacuum, good at fabricating vacuum tight vessel and what we lacked was the expertise in control system for electric heaters. We decided that we will purchase the control system and integrate with the vacuum vessel and the heaters. We were successful in this gamble and we could build the vacuum furnace at a fraction of the cost of imported furnace. Not only this, we opened a new business of designing and building vacuum furnaces. Using this furnace we have brazed several aluminium heat exchangers. Later we built a high temperature vacuum brazing furnce for brazing stainless steel
When BHPV wanted to buy several kilometers of superinsulated pipe for transporting liquid oxygen and liqiid nitrogen from production plant to storage system BHPV found that the imported price of these pipes was busting its budget. We stepped in and offered to the Management that we could manufacture these pipes in R&D at a much lower cost. Mnagement was sceptical. We offered that we will build a trial pipe line selected by the Design department and subject the test pipe to any test desired by the QC department and if QC is satisfied with the performance, then we should get an opportunity build the entire pipe linr. R&D pipelines fully passed all the tests specified in the design document and we desined, manufactured and supplied the entire pipe line.
Another innovative idea I introduced was the transfer of technology to shops. I realised that a product or a process when transferred to the shop fails because it is not nurtured properly in the shops. Whenever a new product developed by R&D was transferred to the shops we insisted that the people who developed the product should also move to the shops. The engineer who developed it and the welders, fitters and others who worked in the projects were transferred along with the project. They can remain till the shop people absorbed the new technology successfully and felt confident to run it without R&D's help. We also offered that any of the staff so transferred desired to continue in the Shops can do so provided we are allowed to recruit new people in their place. This worked nicely for us.In one stroke we ensured that whatever we developed did not fail on the shop floor.
I think this is the first time any body thought of such a process of transfer of technology from R&D to shops.
A short list of various projects developed is given in my blog Dr. G.J.Guru Raja.
No comments:
Post a Comment