Thursday, March 28, 2024

“We Design Keeping in Mind Manufacturing Cost as a Key Parameter”

Think like a micro, get it working!' goes the idea behind TL Micro Automation, a company that offers embedded design services. Siddharth Unny, director, TL Micro Automation, speaks to Abhimanyu Rathore of EFY for the Design in India series.

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Q. Do you follow the same strategy for Indian clients too?
A. For clients, in general, we showcase our design capabilities using in-house products we have developed. This is something we do regularly. We keep developing products for sectors we are focusing on. This reduces design time when we are working for our clients, because our teams have already studied the sector and developed a product for that sector. This gives clients confidence in our abilities. We also work on early-stage-costing with clients, for both the end-product and the services. This ensures that our clients are confident of both our technological capabilities as well as our strength in working for a target product price, which is very important for their business. Our expertise in embedded design across a wide range of platforms helps us get projects.

A perspective on human resources

Q. How many circuit/system design and chip design engineers do you have?
A. We have six design engineers working with us. These are true ’embedded design engineers’ capable of delivering both hardware and software design. Typically, a product design team consists of two or, at the most, three engineers. We are not in the head count business. We find that product design works best using small teams of highly-competent engineers.

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Q. Would you be recruiting design engineers in the next 12 months?
A. No, we have no plans to recruit at the moment.

Q. Do you have a training/internship programme?
A. No, we do not have an internship programme. However, we do answer queries from students, if they write to us. We are thinking about starting a training program, since we have received many requests from the student community as well as professionals, to do so. But this may take a couple of months to come into existence. We are designing a course focused on product design for the Indian market.

Q. Do you hire freshers? What are your selection criteria and are you specific about the colleges they come from?
A. Yes, we hire freshers from time to time. Our criterion is simple. We look at the work they have done in their college project. If the work is original and they have approached it from a design point-of-view, they are likely to get hired. We are not particular about the college, only the technical skills and the mindset of the candidate matter.

Q. What are the skills freshers need to develop early on?
A. It is more of a mindset issue. They should be encouraged to get out of the copy-paste mentality and work on original ideas and concepts. Today, with the Internet and all kinds of electronic kits available, they have everything required to learn. It is about taking the initiative and doing original work from the time they are in college. I feel if the industry talks to these guys early on and conveys to them that this kind of self-learning is seen as a quality, students will respond. There is no lack of intelligence or talent in India. It is about channelling that talent in the right way.


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