For TML....

Well, since I have spent a better part of the last one year at TATA Motors Limited, I think a post exclusive to it was long overdue. Kind of a record of the whole experience.. Of course, we do have a 110 page (yes, we wrote 110 pages; that’s why I haven’t been blogging !! :-P) colourful report, costing 400 bucks, to keep with us for as log as we’re alive..

Anyway, I think one of the best things about working at TML, especially in the Engineering Research Centre (ERC) was that...well, it looks good on the resume! I know that’s as selfish as it can get, but it’s also a fact. Firstly, for a mechanical engineering student, TATA Motors is one of the best companies you can get to do your project in, and secondly, Research is always an attractive word…makes people think you’re a rocket scientist! And of course, if you’re working on developing something called an "Active Bonnet", which most people haven’t heard of before, it’s like sone pe suhaga! (No, I’m not explaining what an active bonnet is...google it if you want to know!)

Coz anytime your relatives and friends (especially juniors) ask you what your project is all about, you can start rambling about how an active bonnet is a growing field of research, because pedestrian safety is a big concern nowadays, especially in European countries! Of course, throwing in jargon like safety regulations, reversible hinges, retractor pretensioners, deformation space, head impact tests etc in good measure, helps a lot!

No, jokes apart, we were really lucky to have got such an amazing project. (Thanks to Gau’s dad and Gogate sir!) Actually developing and testing your own mechanism is something very few undergrads can boast of doing. (Yes, what we did was something no one in India has done before! Seriously!) Besides, the whole experience of working in a company like TML for 8 months helped put a lot of things into perspective. Like the fact that what we have learnt in the past 3 years is just a tiny crystal on top of the iceberg; and that some of our basics are horrible messed up! Plus, considering the bigger picture, it helped answer a lot of the what-do-I-want-to-do-in-the-future questions.. So it definitely was a learning experience!

And, we developed a lot of valuable skills along the way. For one, efficient photocopying! And how to work from 6 am to 7:30 pm for two days straight, something I hope we never have to do again! Most importantly, patience! And loads of it! Well, when you’re made to work with shopfloor people who take fifteen minutes to fit one hinge on a car bonnet, you are left with no choice but to be patient! Of course, eventually we ended up doing the fitting jobs on our own, which works out much better...and faster!

But one of the biggest advantages we had was that we had a fantastic oral exam! And anyone who’s given a project oral knows how difficult it is to get one of those! The thing was, our examiners, like most people, had never heard of an active bonnet, and so after our presentation, instead of asking us screwy questions on why we did what we did, they were asking us stuff like- "So does the bonnet work like a spring in this mechanism?" and "If you raise the bonnet by 80 mm, wouldn’t it hamper the driver’s vision?" :-)

I should mention that it wasn't all fun, one of the downsides was that we ended up working a lot harder than most of our friends and seniors. We could take a break only if we had a really good reason, and our project guide was an absolute perfectionist, which is good in the long run, but as students who are used to bunking lectures and doing nothing at BC, it was a little overwhelming at times!

Anyway, all of that is over now! We just have a couple of things left to wrap up the project completely. And there’s this amazing feeling of accomplishment whenever I see my 110 page, hard-bound report with my name embossed on it in gold. Of course, 160 students of my batch have a similar report, but mine is different coz it’s the biggest of them all, and coz we worked the most for it, without any stipend!

So all in all, it’s been good !! :-)