Vineet Seth, Managing Director – South Asia & Middle East, Mastercam APAC and DMI Influencer 2022 shares with us Mastercam’s initiatives that are empowering companies and professionals with knowledge and solutions.
Recent Collaborative Measures
Mastercam With TTL Consortium Signs MoU with Bihar Govt for 149 ITI upgradation
January 31, 2022: Recognizing that there exists a skill gap is step one towards progress and the Indian Government identified this in the year 2015, with a broad vision to skill close to half a billion Indians in different industry related skill sets and technology. What started then, has taken roots in multiple skill development initiatives by various State Governments and industry leaders. One such initiative, is a vision by industry leaders Tata Technologies Ltd (TTL) working alongside with several State Governments to enrich the quality of education delivered in vocational trades in the Government Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs), within the state. ITI’s have been imparting vocational training to students for many decades now, and some of the popular trades are those of fitter, electrician, lathe operator, plumber etc. However, TTL, along with a consortium of global leaders in manufacturing technology – such as Mastercam, amongst others are introducing CAD/CAM, CNC Machining, 3D Printing, Robotics, IoT and various other advanced trades in these ITIs, by means of upgrading infrastructure, equipment, curriculum and courses.
Karnataka was the first state to embrace this project in 2021, following which TTL along with Global Technology Leaders like Mastercam and others, offered the latest, future-ready and industrial versions of software and products to 150 ITIs, following the MoU signed between the Government of Karnataka and TTL. The consortium led by TTL has demonstrated total commitment to the initiative by completing delivery & installation of majority of the deliverables to the 150 Government ITIs within a year. Each consortium member has been identified by TTL as leaders of their respective fields and also who have demonstrated dedication and total commitment towards success of the Skill India Mission. The consortium partners are providing their Industrial versions of equipment and technology to these ITIs. This will ensure that the ITI students will learn on concurrent and relevant technology, with a view to being industry ready, upon completion of their course. Bihar became the second state in India to sign the MoU with TTL along with 20+ other Global Technology Leaders, including Mastercam, on the 31st of January 2022. The MoU was signed in Patna, in the august presence of the Honourable Minister for Labour Resources, Government of Bihar, Shri Jibesh Kumar. As part of this initiative, 149 state owned ITIs will be upgraded to the latest infrastructure, technology, equipment and curriculum. Tens of thousands of trained manpower, in various manufacturing practices will be industry ready – armed with concurrent technology and knowledge, from these ITIs, each year. In line with our nation’s ambition to increasing the share of manufacturing in our GDP, this trained manpower availability is definitely going to boost productivity and quality. Mastercam is a key contributor to the vision and initiatives, led by TTL, to help these ITI students have access to better jobs, while also helping industry get access to trained and work-ready manpower. Mastercam is offering the latest versions of its CAD/CAM software, courseware, and knowledge.
The Organization’s Vision
Mastercam is the world’s most widely used CAM software, with over 284K installations across the globe, and we have been in this leadership position continuously for the past 26 years. Clearly, our core focus has remained consistent since our inception. We adhere to our strategy of combining superior software programming with practical shop floor experience. We have remained at the forefront of CAD/CAM technology by listening to our customers’ needs, being accessible, and most of all, being dedicated to our customers. We provide CAD/CAM solutions to support manufacturing applications in moldmaking, automotive, aerospace, and consumer industries, among others. Our customers range from one-person job shops to Fortune 100 manufacturers and the same software that is used by large companies such as HAL, ISRO, Boeing and Tata-Sikorsky, for example, is still affordable enough for the small job shops spread across the regions.
All teams are driven to push ourselves and our software to deliver ways of machining faster, more efficiently, and with more precision. In addition, we understand the importance of offering strong, local, support and service. We are careful to ensure our local representatives are the experts in their fields and can help Mastercam users get the most from the software tools they use.
Mastercam India currently employs nearly 50 sales and technical staff that are spread across the length and breadth of the region, who collectively communicate in over 12 different languages. Our Application Engineers are enriched with CAM experience and have a common goal to exceed our customers’ expectations.
We are present at nearly every industrialised town, and this is by design, so that we are close to our customers, even to those that are in certain remote geographies.
We are easily among the topmost CAM brands in the country. We have a pan-India presence both through our direct operations as well as a network of knowledgeable, experienced and loyal resellers. Our focus is also to strengthen them and increase reach to more and more customers as we move forward. We are also investing significant time and efforts on our skill development initiatives, to ensure that manufacturing knowledge is passed on to budding technicians and engineers consistently and seamlessly across the country.
Finally, we intend to remain committed to our motto which is – to create software and services that solve the world’s manufacturing challenges.
Organization’s Contribution to Industry Growth
The Make in India initiative envisions to create an additional 100 million jobs by 2025 in the country. Unless this is backed by a robust skill development plan, there would be a huge, trained manpower shortage. In order to support this pillar, a new Ministry for Skill Development & Entrepreneurship, announced in 2014, identifies skill development gaps, proposes skill development areas and encourages industry to bring the latest in technology and knowledge to academia. It has always been our endeavour to work with some of the Skill initiatives across many states in the country. With this goal in mind, we have partnered with various training and skill development organisations, including certain Industry Apex Bodies, Industry Clusters, Specialist Institutes and Private training centres. While we have had a decent success in this strategy, we had always been looking out to make an impact on a large scale.
Mastercam India have been privileged to have got the opportunity to partner with Tata Technologies Ltd, as industry partners for the Government of Karnataka (GoK) program to transform 150 ITI Centres into Technology hubs.
A first of its kind in India, this project primarily aims to train around 20,000 highly skilled individuals each year in the long-term vocation courses and over 1,00,000 professionals each year in the short-term courses.
GoK, in collaboration with Tata Technologies envisioned a wholistic development of highly skilled individuals by means of access to cutting edge technology, updated courseware, world-class training content and Industry-centric curriculum fortified with Deployment of subject matter experts (SMEs) for a period of three years to hand-hold ITI Trainers, alongside focusing on communication skills to make the trainees job-ready. Mastercam’s role in the consortium is to provide latest manufacturing software across key areas in subtractive machining.
Owing to the growing success of this initiative, the Governments of Bihar, Assam and Tamil Nadu have also signed MoUs recently, to replicate the same model within ITIs and Polytechnics in their states.
We have been working with the consortium leaders, Tata Technologies for well nearly two and a half years in rolling out a program that will not only benefit the trainees at ITIs, but also MSMEs and the manufacturing industry at large. It is common knowledge that many fresh ITI pass-outs are not always industry ready and require internship at industries in order to learn current manufacturing practices and processes; The training gap between real world work and academic examples, will be a thing of the past with this initiative, since the consortium consists of global leaders in various manufacturing fields.
In all by the end of 2023 close to 500 ITI centres in Karnataka, Bihar, Assam and Tamil Nadu will use Mastercam as part of their curriculum in teaching Computer Aided Machining to the CNC/CAM programmers of tomorrow.