Working Hand in Hand

The changing dynamics of the manufacturing world require students to be equipped with new skills to be future ready. To this end, Dassault Systèmes is being highly instrumental by collaborating with educators and students across various institutions and disciplines to bring about flexible, tailored learning solutions that can shape tomorrow’s professionals.

In today’s economy, the academic community must reinvent itself to prepare engineers for the future. As per the industry reports, 85 percent of the jobs suited for the year 2030 do not exist today, making it hard to know which specific skills will be needed in the days to come. Thus, it has become imperative to focus on learning new skills with new methods of learning. The ability to do this is incredibly useful in this era of transformation. Traditional schools and training programs are still necessary, but students are increasingly turning towards online courses, peer-to-peer programs, and boot camps to acquire new talents. Reports also suggest that 49 percent of 18-24 year olds globally are already engaged in some form of learning to develop new ways of working with digital skills.

In this age of technologically integrated businesses, it is essential to focus on a set of strengths which comprises creative thinking, logic, emotional intelligence, technological literacy as well as objective judgment. The Skill India Mission by the Government of India is a step towards bridging the skill gap in the country and has proven to be instrumental in equipping students with the best of the industry opportunities to enhance their skills.

Working for a change in education

It has a long-standing tradition of collaborative innovation with educators across the globe. India is one of the fastest growing markets for the company and its focus is not just in serving existing customers, but also acquiring new ones and preparing the workforce of the future. In India, including both academic and commercial sectors, the company’s CAGR over a period of three years is 21 percent. Today, more than 1,000 institutes are using SOLIDWORKS to teach engineering subjects like solid modeling computer-aided design (CAD) and computer-aided engineering (CAE). Most of these institutes are using its campus-wide license which allows them to access SOLIDWORKS Licenses anywhere in the campus and even on students’ laptops. This helps in cultivating innovation as students can work on their projects and design ideas anywhere anytime using SOLIDWORKS.

Starting them young

An equally important goal is to support student competitions that create product advocates from the top students of the world. To foster innovation, the company also organizes an annual students’ competition ‘Aakruti’ which is aimed at encouraging students to showcase their design skills, creativity, and innate talents.

Aakruti fosters innovation

Aakruti is well aligned with Dassault Systèmes’ vision to promote the advancement of excellence in all aspects of engineering, engineering technology, and design while fostering innovative student projects and professors’ educa-tional practices. This year, Aakruti focused on transforming existing products with future technologies by creating smarter products for especially abled citizens, rural ecosystems, and waste management. The team from Pimpri Chinchwad College of Engineering, Nigadi, Pune, emerged as the winner after competing with over 850 teams from 196 colleges across 21 states in India in Aakruti 2017. Their project is extremely relevant, and when commercialized, can provide a new dimension to municipal bodies across the country. Their ‘Smart Product for Waste Management and Reuse Project’ deals with the collection and segregation of municipal solid waste, its treatment at a local level and the generation of tangible and resalable products that have a good market demand.

The waste management plan designed on SOLIDWORKS provides a treatment of dry waste and generates electricity, slag, hot water as well as distilled water. The treatment of wet wastes generates biogas and manure that provide great impetus to the agro-based economy.

”SOLIDWORKS is quite an effective and user-friendly software that has helped our students develop the concept of ‘Smart Product from Solid Waste Management’. All the required verticals of the software were used to develop the model for their product. As a faculty member, I recommend providing real-life problem statements to all engineering students and allowing them to work on these themes for competitions. Adequate time should be provided to students to develop 3D models of their products. Additionally, selected projects must be funded for prototype development and guidance be provided to students for setting up their own startups. This will help them create innovative products with the aid of the software.”