IT is the key for the engineering design industry

What is the role of IT in automotive design?

IT has become the key for the designing industry. It has helped in speeding
up the whole process and reduce the time for designing. What used to take 100
hours earlier, takes just 14 hours now. Designs were created manually using
drawing boards, now we use AutoCAD for the entire designing.

The use of 3D simulation helps in viewing a model even before it is built.
The CADD design has really helped in revolutionizing the design industry.
Adoption of IT has facilitated in making the communication faster between
employees located in various locations for design reviews.

Earlier a single person used to do the entire design. But at Ranal, 100
people do the same thing now, reducing the designing time. The designed file
size is very huge and large data is created every day, therefore the speed of
connectivity is another important thing for our entire business. We need a good
IT infrastructure for executing our projects in time it is the backbone of our
business.

What are some of Ranals achievements and challenges?

We are one of the pioneers in auto engineering and have developed a lot of
technologies for this area. The whole technology of designing a car, remotely
simulating it, and reducing the cycle-time is a big challenge. The primary
challenge faced by us was to make foreign customers believe that being an Indian
company, we are capable of designing foreign cars utilizing the time zone away
from the manufacturing plant, with optimal resources. We are pioneers in
standardization and customization to make designing faster. Another major
achievement is that we have become the new design partners for General Motors
globally. We also acquired a US company called Koltan Bar and integrated their
expertise with Ranal.

What are your future plans for the Indian auto industry?

We started our operations in 2000 as a 100% export oriented company in
automotive design. We are all set to enter the Indian automotive design
industry. We have already done designing for Tata Motors. Global automotive
companies are setting up their operations in India and we will be the design
partners for them, as their global design is done by us. We are in discussions
with Bajaj and Mahindra for their new designs.

Pradeesh Chandran

pradeeshc@cybermedia.co.in