MSME plays a crucial role in building country’s economic roadmap but due to several reasons, they face numerous challenges. Dr. Nagahanumaiah, Director, CMTI - Central Manufacturing Technology Institute, shares with Pro MFGmedia the role of CMTI in guiding the MSME towards the path of success.
As India has commenced its journey to become self-reliant, there has been an immense focus on startups and entrepreneurship. Usually, many startups face numerous production challenges. Often the challenges can be managed by few solutions such as:
⮚ Hire a skilled workforce to resolve the issues
⮚ Seek help from institutes or organizations
⮚ In most cases, the entrepreneur may compromise, whereas the cash-rich entrepreneur can acquire solutions
As per a report published in 2015, 60% of the total innovation done were new for the Company, about 9-10% were new for India, and less than 3% of innovations were new for the globe. Small-scale enterprises are largely dependent on the 'jugaad innovation' as they cannot afford high-end technologies. Apart from high-end technologies, they also cannot manage IP sharing issues. Our country produces 15 Lakh engineers annually, but more than 50% of the graduates do not earn suitable jobs. Contrarily, large organizations with an extensive talent pool do not utilize the skill set of young engineers.
With a vision to resolve the production challenges faced by the MSMEs, the Ministry of Heavy Industries initiated schemes that will involve all the resources to find novel solutions. Such schemes are useful to MSMEs, who cannot hire professionals, as it is a big financial commitment.
CMTI has created a common platform for stakeholders which consists of the industry (problem owner), academic institutes, private organization, technocrats, scientists, researchers, and government policymakers to work together to find a novel solution for the challenges faced by the industries. The platform plays the role of the problem solver for the industry. This platform serves as a suitable portal wherein even the industry experts can provide solutions voluntarily or professionally. Since in the current times, there is an emphasis on startups, the technology marketing experts and market financial enablers can also join the platform. And then there are technology analysts who can do a technical gap analysis and provide relevant solutions. Thus, the platform becomes a 360-degree solution provider for a diverse set of problems that is enabled by professionals from various backgrounds. The platform allows any individual or an organization to register by following a simple authentication process and a clear definition of the skills possessed.
The journey of engagement starts with the industry posting a problem. Given the fact that the platform provides engineering and manufacturing-related solutions, it is crucial that the posted problem has been professionally defined. Sometimes the industry players also give professional advise from engineers and experts to define the industry problems in a language that is understood by the experts on the portal. Once the problem is posted, all the experts - whether individuals or organizations - get notified. If the defined problem is from the area of their expertise, the experts have to submit their proposal for the review and approval of the one who has posted the same. Once the work has been allocated, the problem is then visible to the problem owner only.
What the platform also enables is a collaboration or a mechanism of networking. This is a paid feature that enables CMTI as a moderator to provide for the security concerns of IP sharing. This feature enables the problem owner to outsource some actionable to another skilled individual or organization before the innovation process starts. For instance, if an individual innovator or a student is the problem owner, he can reach out to other innovators with specialized skillsets or CMTI scientists themselves to deliver a part of the committed service at a cost. By charging the solution providers, we also provide accountability to the industry. For instance, if a student innovator has taken up the assignment, he can opt for being guided by the CMTI mentor on a chargeable basis to enable the service delivery. Similarly, they can also rent out CMTI's facility for prototyping and other purposes.
Before starting this open innovation platform, to generate interest, CMTI rolled out an idea of a mechathon for student innovators. The three days event which took place in March 2019, saw an overwhelming response. The participants came forward in a team of 3 to 4, with a total of 138 teams expressing their interest in participating. Out of these 138 teams, our expert jury members shortlisted 64 teams based on the uniqueness of their ideas. On the event's first day, the goal for these 64 teams was to define their ideas in engineering terms OR to draw a circuit diagram of how they will put their thoughts into execution. CMTI's jury shortlisted 24 teams who were asked to build a working prototype of their engineering ideas over the next two days. At the end of the event, 5 to 6 teams were announced as winners. As an extension to this above concept, CMTI is now shortlisting 5-6 innovations which are either important to CMTI or various other industries and keeping an open innovation event where student innovators are invited to help put the idea into execution. This concept acts as a win-win for both, the students and the innovation seekers. The winning student gets prize money at the end of the innovation process, while the MSME innovation seekers get a cost-effective solution.
Another concept rolled out by CMTI includes extending manufacturing and design support to startups or individuals who want to become an entrepreneur. Under this scheme, CMTI evaluates the commercial viability and acceptability of the idea with the seeking organizations and then decides to extend its support through its portal.
To ensure awareness about its portal and various other schemes, CMTI utilizes its close connection with IMTMA, the tech summit it organized in December 2020 that saw participants from the machine tool industry and other platforms. As of February 2021, CMTI on its digital platform has a network of over 1,250 students from 39 colleges and 225 experts from 15 industries and 39 academic institutes.
CMTI’s organizational structure and the various departments, which plays a key role in resolving the issue faced by the industry:
CMTI thrives on challenges. There is hardly any instance where the delay in project delivery could have happened. This delay is usually because of an external factor that is not directly in control of CMTI. The Institute is uniquely positioned to provide customized and cost-effective solutions to its industrial customers. It offers customized solutions right from the planning to the development stage to its customers.
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