iRead, iLearn, iWrite. Hence, iBlog.

For Indian Military, Nuclear & Space matters, visit:

Monday, September 15, 2008

Design Engineers, I.T. and Crowdsourcing

The September issue of M.E Magazine carries an interesting article about the future of Design Engineering, the tools used and the nature of their work environment.

It talks of the ability to prepare CAD drawings by simply sketching the design drawing on to the screen, an activity we are more comfortable with, instead of using mouse clicks and command line to do the same.

It also talks about the ability to design a product by holding, touching and moving it while designing even while it exists only virtually. It would be achieved by developing effective Haptic technology [Wii remote and force-feedback devices being the initial iterations of this technology].

But what really got me all excited is the concept of developing a collaborative environment whereby the Design Engineers, separated by vast geographical distances can come together to form a team on an ad-hoc basis, develop the product and once ready for production, disperse to join up on to other such ad-hoc design teams. By leveraging the power of I.T. solutions and connectivity provided by the Internet, such a team can be made possible for even the most complex of Engineering design projects. This concept of forming ad-hoc teams over a virtual environment to develop something and then sharing its profit without ever having to come coming face-to-face with each other is known as Crowdsourcing.

This system of collaboration, if successfully implemented can prove to be a boon for our countries R&D efforts, especially in the Defense sector. DRDO, is presently facing an acute shortage of manpower due to high attrition rate. As a result, quite a few of our country’s developmental programs are running behind schedule. In order to tide over this manpower shortage, DRDO has now decided to recruit people on a program-oriented contractual basis. This, it is expected, would address the manpower issue and help speed up our developmental programs.

I would not be very far off when saying that some of the finest individuals teaching in Universities abroad happen to be from India. As professors, they are entitled to go on Sabbatical for a couple of years [ball park figure]. Having lived abroad for a significant time, they may not be very open to the idea of coming back to work in India even if they wish to give back to the country [different work culture and red-tapism being the major reasons].

By developing an effective system of Crowdsourcing for Engineers, DRDO should be able to tap into this vast pool of brilliant minds who could be employed to be part of our developmental programs. By involving them in the program, not only would we be able to engage the best minds in our programs, but also get back our schedule on track to achieve our targets of excellence.

You may read the full article here

design futures

Godspeed