Vitalizing PLM initiatives in India

The news item “Cognizant, Invensys forge alliance” (18 Jul 2009; Saturday; The New Indian Express) shows how manufacturing and technology management is gaining ground as a strategic alternative for driving growth in many verticals. While Cognizant has forged an alliance with Invensys, it is yet to be seen how they are going to create an ambience for Indian manufacturing to absorb PLM solutions wholeheartedly.

Being a strong believer in design thinking, here is my view about “Why PLM initiatives do not take off smoothly in India?”

It has been hypothesized that most Indian firms (educational institutes included) have a certain design deficit. As proposed earlier [see the research proposals by K. Sahu and B.P.Panda (2007, 2008)] the design deficit makes it hard for organizations to absorb soft technology. While research is underway to prove this hypothesis, PLM solution providers have to cover significant extra mile in developing viable partnership programs. Doing business through VARs (value-added resellers) as business partners may not be the right solution for most developers of PLM solutions. One key ingredient missing in these partnership programs is healthy collaborative-leadership governed by design thinking. As a result MoU objectives are pursued more in letter than in spirit. Hence they don’t yield the dividends that are expected.

The framework suggested in this paper titled “Using Meta Objects for Enhancing Supply Chain Collaboration” (Sahu et. al. 2002) can be extended to capture the Voice of the Stakeholder (VoS) and then subsequently augment the quality function deployment (QFD) process by facilitating collaborative involvement of the supply chain partners. This will vitalize the PLM initiatives for effective outcomes.

Realizing Prof. Yashpal’s Vision

While the Yash Pal committee has been quite candid in highlighting the ground reality in the Universities of India, the Government cannot and should not think of doing away with the upcoming Deemed Universities. Rather it should create a conducive environment to promote the higher level thinking made explicit in the Yashpal committee report – that of encouraging multi-disciplinary interaction with greater autonomy for free academic thinking. It is important to have greater autonomy in a self-regulatory framework with a competitive environment taking care of the quality needs of the education sector – independent regulators will help to a certain extent in ensuring transparency.

Reengineering the academic processes in old Universities would invite a lot of resistance. The old regulations have always inhibited schools, departments and individuals from looking beyond their parent disciplines. Having created water tight disciplinary silos, it is difficult for the old Universities to adapt to the new mindset of promoting multi-disciplinary interactions.
Unlike the old Universities, however, the new Universities are like clean slates where the idea of a University (as espoused by Prof Yash Pal) can be genetically coded right from the start. Thus instead of making them conform to old regulations, a new innovative regulatory framework should be quickly put in place for promoting free and unfettered academic thinking.

Each individual academic entity in such a University should have the autonomy to look beyond disciplinary boundaries in support of the larger University objectives. Resources ought to be deployed accordingly. The old regulations never encouraged individuals to be growth engines – their ideas were never appreciated. Click on the figure alongside. People with ideas have either left or have withdrawn into their shells. Such situations should not arise in the future Universities of India.

In this connection I would like to highlight the IFEES-GEDC declaration which is a reflection of the changing times where engineers have to proactively participate in promoting a flat world. While this body is promoting the role of engineers beyond borders, there are similar bodies in other disciplines as well (e.g. doctors without borders).

Here is an excerpt from the Paris Declaration of the Global Engineering Deans Council:
1) To provide a world-wide forum for exchange of information and discussion of experiences, challenges, and best practices in leading an engineering school.
2) To provide a means for engineering deans to partner with one another in curriculum development and innovation, and to collaborate with industry, government, and other stakeholders.
3) To build a network that would support engineering deans to play a leadership role in developing regional and national policies to advance economies.
4) To participate in the development and maintenance of a global system of quality standards for engineering education.
[The GEDC’s Paris Declaration]

Related blog posts:

• Prof. Yashpal on Higher Education


• Godspeed to SPEED (on IFEES @KIIT University, Bhubaneswar)