Engineers body looks beyond the borders

To participate in international trade fairs

India produces the highest number of engineers, next only to China. But when it comes to getting the best brains for the manufacturing sector, the industry faces alarming scarcity.

Say it the glitch and glamour associated with the new age technology like Information Technology or the best compensation packages, industry experts feel that most engineering graduates turn to IT in the middle of the career. This dims the chance of India, competing with China, the leader in the manufacturing sector.

Experts opine that there is need for a lot of skill and technology enhancement in the sector. Said O P Khanna, a former national chairman of Indian Institute of Production Engineers (IIPE), "Particularly the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) which comprise 70 per cent of the industry need to upgrade their technology," he said, adding that Indian SMEs were lagging behind China in term of technological advancement.

According to M S Zahed, national chairman of IIPE, although manufacturing sector is facing a skill shortage, as far as the compensation package is concerned, even in manufacturing and production sector also, companies have started paying on a par with the IT industries.

Zahed said, as the largest professional body representing the manufacturing industry in the country, IIPE had taken steps to increase its reach among the various types of manufacturing industries and increase the number of members. Presently, IIPE has about 1,200 members with almost 65 per cent of them from South and Western India.

"We are upgrading our organisation and taking up steps to produce the best of engineers for manufacturing sector with a close interaction with the academia and the industry," he added.

Zahed said that as an institution, IIPE had decided to no more confine itself to within the country and has taken steps to participate at least four international trade fairs every year. "We will involve ourselves with our counterparts in various others countries in the field of consultancy and try to bring out the latest in the field of production engineering," he added.

In the last board meeting, IIPE has decided to introduce a two-year postgraduate programme in production engineering. For this, IIPE is in talks with a leading technical university in Karnataka which will provide the necessary infrastructure to start the programme. "The whole programme has been designed taking into account the demands of the industry," Zahed said.

To start with, the intake capacity for the course will be around 40-50. The course will cover four semesters and 40 per cent of the curriculum will be practical oriented. "While the first two semester will be a mix of theory and practical, during the last two semesters, the students will be focussing on practical issues," said Murali Lingireddy, a member of IIPE and Dean, Deccan Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore. IIPE will also try to ensure the proper placement of all students, he added.