When Robert Bosch Engineering and Business Solutions (RBEI), which has since been rechristened Bosch Global Software Technologies, started developing electric vehicle system engineering solutions, it realised the manpower the organisation had wasn’t quite ready to deliver.
Engineer training had to happen earlier, in college, and it had to have a strong emphasis on simulation, Pradeep Kumar Keloth, Head of Engineering – EV Components and Systems, RBEI realised. And in one of their regular discussions with MathWorks, Pradeep shared his concern about the workforce, one that will be ready to contribute right from day one.
Pradeep saw the gap, and envisioned an integrated course curriculum in the final engineering semester, that is aimed at creating industry-ready engineers.
That essentially was the start point of what has become one of the most successful collaborations between the industry and academia in the Indian automotive space – a partnership that has seen three key stakeholders bringing to fruition their respective expertise into one single vision, that of creating engineering graduates with requisite system engineering skills.
One thing led to another, and during a national workshop conducted at the National Institute of Technology Calicut (NIT Calicut) in 2017, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed to create a tripartite collaboration with RBEI and MathWorks as the other partners.
The faculty at NIT Calicut worked with engineers from RBEI and MathWorks to create a new final-year undergraduate course on Electric Vehicle System Engineering – a course that covers EV fundamentals (such as regenerative braking, inverter topologies, and pulse-width modulation techniques), energy storage systems, electric drive train systems, and modelling and simulation of EV systems.
Although the initial class-size goal was of at least 15 students, the course attracted interest from 43-44 students in the first year. The demand for the course can be judged from the fact that 108 students applied for the course in the second year, Dr Kumaravel Sundaramoorthy, Assistant Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering, NIT Calicut said.
The MoU, initially signed between the parties for a period of three years, was renewed for a period of an additional five years in 2021. “That’s the kind of success we have had. Usually MoUs end up in papers, but NIT Calicut proved it otherwise,” said an elated Dr Kumaravel.
Significantly, while top students earn internships at RBEI, where they work on real-world EV projects, the MoU doesn’t restrict students completing this course to work only with Bosch or MathWorks. Many students have received offers from industry leaders, including Bajaj Auto and Ampere EV.
“At RBEI, the opportunities are huge, and it is actually limited by the talent we have. The amount of engineers we need to develop these complex systems is quite high, and every year it keeps increasing,” said RK Shenoy, Member of Executive Leadership Team and Senior VP – Mobility Engineering, Bosch.
MathWork’s contribution in this partnership and ensuring meaningful completion of the course cannot be reiterated. Although MATLAB is a part of engineering education in some of the preliminary subjects, like circuit theory and power systems, the involvement of MathWorks engineers in imparting MATLAB lessons to students brought about a completely different dimension. Their hand-on experience helps students move from merely theoretical to practical knowledge. And that made a lot of difference to our students, said Dr Kumaravel.
The key reason for the success of this collaboration is the fact that there was equal involvement from all the three stakeholders. This partnership actually led to fruition because the industry stepped in to design the entire course, rather than just providing inputs, said Dr Viju Ravichandran, Education Technical Evangelist, MathWorks.
What next?
The coming together of Bosch and MathWorks has attracted a lot of interest from other institutes, and several institutes in the southern part of the country want to replicate a similar course, said Dr Viju. Moreover, other companies and service providers, having seen the success of this collaboration, are keen to explore and create such courses for students.
While electric mobility as a subject is one of the most sought after, there is a need to focus on all other megatrends of connected technology, autonomous driving, and shared mobility. Vijayalayan R, Manager, Automotive Industry and Control Design Vertical Application Engineering Teams, MathWorks agreed. “So far, we’ve been focusing on a single domain or getting mastery over a single domain, but the biggest need for the industry is bringing the different domains together,” he said.
Interestingly, institutes are starting to look at engineering differently. Viju talked about a certain institute in Karanataka that has introduced a course called ‘Engineering Exploration’ with respect to systems thinking. There is also a ‘Joy of Engineering’ course that gives students a project based learning flavour. In addition, a lot of institutes have established tinkerer’s labs as per AICTE norms.
RBEI has been working with more than 20 institutes in a similar fashion. Shenoy said the company has developed sort of a ‘maturity model’ with which it works with universities. Unlike a decade back, when universities were looked at as a place to get talent, the industry has since progressed to co-create curriculum to ensure the gap is reduced. In addition, there are labs where students are able to get real life experience on the latest systems.
Dr Viju believes MathWorks is in a very unique place, where it gets to know what the industries are using its products in – be it automobiles or aerospace or communication electronics, semiconductors, or a pharmaceutical or finance industry. Working closely with the industries help serve MathWorks as a bridge between both of these entities.
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“We Need To Co-Innovate. That's Next Level Of Maturity”
Tête-à-tête with RK Shenoy, Member of Executive Leadership Team and Senior VP – Mobility Engineering, Bosch.
Give us a sense of the approach at Bosch to nurture talent among students.
RBEI has a programme called “fit for future”, which has the various elements as a part of our strategy, but on the core of it, it is competence. We have a focused approach, meanwhile, to see how we can develop talent, not just in-house, but in the academia and see how we can bridge this and develop them in a speedy manner.
What is next in your horizon?
Next of course is to look at how faculty development can happen, how the common labs and infrastructure, including software and hardware licenses they need to work on the systems can be developed, instead of doing that only once they come to Bosch. And that is where, MATLAB, for example, also comes into the picture.
We feel that we need to co-innovate and that's the next level of maturity. That's the highest level, where we believe that to work on some of the latest technologies, we will have to work with these universities at a level, where there is equal amount of understanding and where we are able to give problems statements to them, and we're able to also jointly develop some of these new algorithms, new methodologies on certain segments.
How do you leverage the strength of this collaboration?
We are looking at identifying specific areas, where the particular university is strong at. We try to find synergies, and have started to link up our centres of excellence with those of the universities.
For example, in case of NIT Calicut, we have put that more on the system engineering and electrification related topics, because we believe that is a common topic we can work, in terms of building systems, doing more of simulation work, piloting certain projects and developing the talent by also bringing in this into their electives.
We do similar things with other institutes. For example, with KLE Technological University, we have done microprocessor and microcontroller-based systems. Similarly with LPU, we have done an IoT master course, which we are developing.
How does Bosch ensure its experts take their experience to students?
I’m personally involved. For example, in some of the universities, I was the sponsor for the university at the executive leadership level among four of us. I take special interest on the university or academia connect. That’s point number one. In my view, it is one of the top topics being led by the senior leadership level.
Secondly, we have a team identified within each COE, who would be the connect with the university in terms of the experts for each elective or topic. Third, we have defined campus ambassadors – we have around two of them from RBEI in every institute, who are around third or fourth year of working in Bosch, because we realise that that is the right level where they understand how the campus life is and what the student's expectations are. And they're able to translate Bosch’s understanding and vision to students.
Industry academia collaborations haven’t been a success in the Indian context, but Bosch has built a model that is working – a model that is very structured. How do you see this maturing?
In India, we are late compared to other countries. That's the reason why we have gone in a speedy fashion now. We realised that at the universities, the practical orientation is much limited even today, whereas in Germany, their academia connect is much deeper. A lot of research work happens along with the universities. So that's a model we looked at and we said that this is something which we need to strengthen in India as well. Even Mexico and Vietnam are ahead of us in this matter.
Secondly, there is a lot of enthusiasm in the academia as well, and they also believe that this practical connect is very much needed. They realise what used to be taught earlier is no longer relevant and the speed at which the technology is changing is much faster.
This is time consuming and needs a lot of my bandwidth. So what we're currently doing is as a part of NASSCOM, under the ER&D Council, we have a talent build-up programme. And I'm part of that and we're looking at scaling up this model. Like Bosch, many other organisations are doing this in our own silos, and we’re looking at connecting these 20-30 institutes.