This must have been one of the inflection points. So far the only chance to interact with APJ. Quiditus. Especially the Q&A.
Address during the inauguration of World Class Test Facility of WIPRO - Copied from APJ's website. All copyrights acknowledged.
07/May/2009 : Bangalore
Certification is Key to Competitiveness
Certification is Key to Competitiveness
“Competitiveness is powered by knowledge” I am delighted to participate in the inauguration of TARANG, Product Qualifications and Compliance Planet (PQCP) at WIPRO for the evaluation of computer and storage, telecom, embedded systems, medical, aero-space, military, automotive and consumer products developed in the country and by the international product developers.
When you see the dynamics of performing organizations, they create their challenges, they set very difficult targets, they develop good manufacturing practices and above all they set up a transparent mechanism for review and feedback at all levels. Wipro has developed a system which will enable production of the most competitive international product, along with a certification process.
What type of business world wipro has to compete and succeed? It is indeed competitiveness. The competitiveness is powered by knowledge power. The knowledge power is powered by Technology and innovation. The Technology and innovation is powered by resource investment. The Resource investment is powered by revenue and return on Investment. The Revenue is powered by Volume and repeat sales through customer loyalty. The customer loyalty is powered by cost, Quality and value of products. The facility TARANG has to provide design robustness, quality with a competitive edge. My best wishes to TARANG members.
My early personal experience
Let me recall test and evaluation experience in one of the programmes. It was during the middle of seventies. I was working with an enthusiastic youthful team on the SLV-3 project, the country’s first launch vehicle that is a rocket programme. We had to develop and qualify many subsystems for the first time. We decided to qualify certain systems in a small sounding rocket flight, Centaure, to gain the rigour of flight experience. One such system chosen was a reaction control system to despin the spinning rocket. Based on information from a magnetometer, the detected spin of the rocket had to be reduced by actuating the reaction control thrusters in a closed loop mode. It was a complex experiment at that point in time. A logic box was designed, reviewed and a total system evaluation was devised in the ground spin test facility. There were anxious moments, the system worked, but then the rotation resulted in enhanced spinning and rather than de-spinning! Our engineers diagnosed the problem quickly. They zeroed on a software change in the system, introduced corrective logic and the system was successfully flown in the sounding rocket. By today’s standard, it was a ground experiment, but it was an innovative validation initiative and paved the way for setting standards for sign convention checks, integrated system simulation and evaluation. Many of those engineers who were part of this simple experiment are today experienced leaders in many national technology programmes. When I am with you, I would like to talk on the topic “Certification is Key to Competitiveness”.
Law of development
When the software industry was doing well; the business was attracting the best of talents. It was triggering entrepreneurship. It was spreading global. The computer courses were the best preferred choice in engineering institutions. Suddenly, the economic turbulence has caused a sense of pessimism and anxiety all over the world. In the last few weeks, wherever I went, be it in Chennai, Mumbai, Thirupathi, Vizag, Abu Dhabi or Seattle or Boston the question uppermost in the minds of people was how the world would overcome the economic turbulence. But I am confident that this crisis will be overcome. How do I get this confidence? Based on my association with young and experienced like you, I am confident that professionals like you can come out with out-of-the box ideas.
I was studying the development patterns and the dynamics of connectivity between nations, especially in trade and business. As you all know, the world has a few developed countries and many developing countries. What is the dynamics between them and what connects them? Developed country has to market their products in a competitive way to different countries to remain as economically developed country. The developing country to get transformed into developed country; they too have to market their products in other countries in a competitive way. Competitiveness is common to both developing and developed countries. Competitiveness has three dimensions: quality of the product, cost effectiveness and product in the market at the right time. Indeed this dynamics of competitiveness in marketing of products by developing and developed countries determines the law of development. When the economy is in turbulence, developing new market will need promotion of enhanced competitiveness. We can see one of the important dimensions of competitiveness is quality of the product. Also the quality of the product has to include performance of the product in all the extremes of the environment in which the product is likely to be operated by the user throughout its life cycle. That is where product qualification and compliance becomes important.
Technological Self-reliance
Few years back, I participated in the handing over of SAMYUKTA system to the Army which uses state-of-the-art sub systems like fast scan receivers, high accuracy direction finding systems, jam resistance communication systems and re-configurable display system. Non-com segment of SAMYUKTA uses high-tech super components, broadband DF system, high power jammers and high accuracy servo systems. One of the typical items which was denied for the programme was CAM (Content Addressable Memory). This was designed and fabricated with SITAR input as an Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) in its foundry. Both public and private sector institutions have produced number of such components indigenously. This has been a major contribution to the industry by SAMYUKTA.
Initially it was thought that shelters for SAMYUKTA would be imported. Later with the active participation of R&D engineers and private sector shelter manufacturers, EMI shielded shelters have been manufactured with stringent specifications and have been used by the programme. These shelters will have multiple applications wherever EMI / EMC become a major operational issue. There are number of examples like this while developing integrated electronic warfare system for Army, Navy and Air Force.
Electronic Warfare is a force multiplier system, which needs high-level secrecy for maintaining surprise against adversary actions. In such a situation, it is essential that the system design, architecture, production, performance and environmental evaluation of the product and deployment knowledge has to be generated within the country and maintained as a closely guarded information by the services. This is essential for ensuring tactical and strategic advantage for our armed forces during an operation. Hence, the knowledge of environmental testing has to be developed along with the knowledge of producing state of the art system to the customers. Establishment of TARANG is a right step in this direction.
EMI - EMC Testing
I am glad to note that TARANG configuration includes EMI/EMC testing as a very prominent part of testing facilities at Wipro. Such sophisticated facilities were confined to ISRO or DRDO in earlier days: in 1970s for SLV-3 development, and 1980s during evolution of Agni, Prithvi and other missiles, primarily because of cost considerations. Availability of such testing and consulting services to conventional industries will surely cover existing gaps. It will be in the overall interest of the EMI/EMC community, particularly SAMEER and such other agencies, to share resources for most productive and cost effective utilization of existing and new facilities. It may also be advisable to coordinate with related professional societies such as Society of EMC Engineers (India).
I have noticed with interest that TARANG already includes Electrostatic Discharge and Lightning Surge testing for Telecom and Aerospace applications, in addition to conventional Conducted and Radiated Emission and Susceptibility testing. But the 40 GHz frequency limit may have to be reviewed soon, since new applications are emerging in higher frequency bands: miniature radars at 94 GHz for seekers, traffic management and collision avoidance, millimeter wave imaging for airport security and night time surveillance, WiMax and other broadband wireless services. The personal networks and home networks would soon be operating at 60 GHz and would have bandwidths of the order of 10 Gbits. Other areas gaining importance for EMC compliance are: Immunity testing for variation in power-line frequency; Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) for hand-held wireless devices such as mobiles, walkie-talkies & cordless phones; and Effects of Electromagnetic Radiation (EMR) on medical and biological systems.
On-site EMC testing is also gaining momentum in the recent times, because of problems observed after installation of complex systems, such as rocket launching sites, communication network management nodes, airports, TV networking ports, power system harmonics in captive generators, etc. This will involve transportable testing stations.
During my work at DRDO and ISRO I insisted the necessity of a design manual, design practices for EMI-EMC for all airborne electronic and communication systems. I am sure WIPRO will evolve a design manual, design practices, and preferred components for EMI-EMC compatibility based on the test experience in the anechoic chamber in partnership with the national and international designers.
Today’s processors and cell phones operate at several Giga Hertz and often switch at 100 Giga Bits per second. Thus what was considered till recently as the realm of Microwaves is being encompassed by the all pervasive digital world. The cell phones and other devices will also operate at high frequencies. Because of the miniaturization and the coexistence of mixed signal- analog and digital waveforms, the issue of EMI/ EMC has become very challenging and critical. I am sure that TARANG would focus on this emerging market of studying high frequency EMI/ EMC in miniaturized systems from this highly potent Digital Market place. The EMI/EMC studies through simulations and actual measurements would also give an additional benefit in understanding the effects of RF signals on the human brain and body which is very much needed to make the world of communication acceptable by the society without fears.
Simulation as a tool for system level testing
As Space, Nuclear Energy and Defence systems are becoming increasingly complex, testing is changing to computer based simulations and demonstrations. Conventional testing methods have several limitations: visualization, overall appreciation of various available options, failure mode analysis, etc. are some such examples. Computer virtual simulations can reduce these limitations to a significant extent, especially when customer or end-user is not fully conversant with overall performance requirements. Many times these simulations can help the system designers to fine-tune specifications and configurations to help meet the objectives. Today, the Electromagnetic simulations have matured to a level that they can be relied upon to give very high accuracy. There are several commercial packages available now in the market.
Self certification philosophy
It is important to differentiate between ‘third party certification’ and ‘self certification’ using third party or outsourced testing facility. Third party certifications are more related to safety, legality, protocols, inspection (acceptance or rejection), avoiding interference to others, administrative restrictions and government orders.
However, self certification using in-house facilities or outsourced testing agencies are also very important from the point of view of customer satisfaction and user-feedback related vender ratings and classifications. For example, when a customer purchases say a Laptop, he or she only checks stickers such as ‘Intel Inside’, ‘CE Compliance’, ‘SAR Certified’, ‘Guarantee Period’ and assurances such as ‘life-long free replacement for certain parts’, ‘regular free updates for certain software’; these can only be achieved through self certification by higher rated vendors. Most of the hardware and software products are becoming increasingly complex and highly competitive; therefore innovative ways have to be evolved not only for efficient manufacturing but also for effective testing and certification methods. Another important point is whenever a problem is reported either inside or from the customer; a transparent root cause analysis has to be carried out expeditiously to find out how the problem escaped the system and to institute further fool proof corrective mechanism.
Conclusion
I am happy that a company fully involved in IT and IT enabled services has felt the need for environmental evaluation of products and services to make them internationally competitive. This will definitely go a long way in making the Indian industry more competitive, especially when a turn around takes place after the present dip in the growth of the manufacturing sector. It may also be explored how the facility created by you can be opened up for certification of products of government or other laboratories.
Dear friends, I have seen three dreams which have taken shape as vision, mission and realization. Space programme of ISRO (Indian Space Research Organization), AGNI programme of DRDO (Defence Research and Development Organization) and PURA (Providing Urban Amenities in Rural Areas) becoming the National Mission.
Of course these three programmes succeeded in the midst of many challenges and problems. I have worked in all these three areas. I want to convey to you what I have learnt on leadership from these three programmes.
a. Leader must have a vision.
b. Leader must have a passion to transform the vision into action.
c. Leader must be able to travel into an unexplored path.
d. Leader must know how to manage a success and failure.
e. Leader must have courage to take decision.
f. Leader should have Nobility in management.
g. Every action of the leader should be transparent.
h. Leader must work with integrity and succeed with integrity.
For success in all the missions, it is essential to have creative leaders. Creative leadership means exercising the vision to change the traditional role from the commander to the coach, manager to mentor, from director to delegator and from one who demands respect to one who facilitates self-respect. For a vibrant manufacturing sector, the important thrust will be on the generation of a number of creative leaders who will pioneer the promotion of product quality in the total environmental spectrum in which it is to operate during its life cycle. With these words, I inaugurate the TARANG.
My best wishes to all the members of WIPRO success in scaling new frontiers in competitiveness. May God Bless you
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