Teams from India

[Zac]

I for one am shocked.

[The_Man]

Originally posted by Zac:
I for one am shocked.

Some how I am not shocked though.

This is really a step back for the Indian teams.
There is no excuse to become worse. Something needs to be done.

There is some activity on the a FSAE Indian team Facebook group (Since this seems to be the forum of choice now a days). If you were at the competitions please join this group. We are planning to collect feedback from all the teams first and then judges and other teams at the competition. I think how ever most of us know what the issues are. The group is closed for now so it is not public domain to start with. I think that will allow more free discussion.

https : / / www . facebook . com / groups / 345409438868469 /

[AngryIndian]

The idea of asking someone from SAE India to conduct a seminar was stupid. I am not even goingto follow up with them. They have graduated from the same colleges when the education system was worse and worked in the same companies when corruption was more. I have realized that the only way performance of Indian tea,ms will improve is if:-

1. The population of India decreases
2. The number of engineering jobs increases
3. The education system improves drastically
4. Companies hire on the basis of talent not academic performance.
5. There is a support system from the government, universities and companies for improving innovation.

If anyone hjas solutions to these problems please suggest

Otherwise, be prepared to be shocked with the performance of Indian teams for the next 5 years. Better concentrate on improving results of UK teams which is the center of motorsports and still underperform. Results might be more immediate there.

[Gaanja]

I have a better chance of walking on the moon than any of those things listed happening in the near future.

One of the biggest problems with most Indian teams (in my opinion) is that the members of the team who return from an event immediately leave the team to follow more career enhancing ventures. There is close to zero interaction between that team and the next. Hence every year there is a requirement to start almost from scratch. If alumni take an active responsibility in guiding the team to make decisions, it will greatly help. Event experience is invaluable.

Secondly, the effort that goes into documenting designs and decisions is abysmal. the repeated failure of teams if because of improper communication between successive teams. If every team member makes a document that answers a few basics questions whenever any decision (be it design or otherwise) is made and documents it, the successive teams will benefit greatly.

Just answer questions like:

What is being done?
Why is it being done? How is it better than the previous system(if it existed)?
Are there any compromises being made?
Who is responsible to bring in the change?
What are tasks involved?
What are the resources required?
What is the timeline for the change to be effective?
How much performance or points do we stand to gain by making this change? (if it directly influences event performance)

The effectiveness of the document depends on how detailed the answers are.

A similar thing can be done for analyzing an event performance and proposals for changes.

There is only so much of knowledge transfer you can do through sitting and talking to them or referring them to books.

If there is a good log of these documents made, any sensible new comer will gain more competence and in fast time than any elaborate training module you implement. Lessons learnt will never be lost or forgotten.

[Rex Chan]

Gaanja: sounds like our team pretty much (and a lot of Australian, Uk, US teams I would guess). It's not anything special to any country.

At Melbourne, we have always had 100% new team members. The 2012 guys are starting (trying anyway) to change things, with some people pretty solid for being on the 2013 team already.

I've been around since ~2009, so have been around the longest, as far as I know. However, the problem I find is that you can tell the new guys what to do, and why they should do it. But it usually gets forgotton, and inevitably not done, so you make the same mistakes anyway. It comes from experience - if you're there when something happens, even if you weren't the cause of it, you'll remember it better, and hopefully do better next time. I've found that talking doesn't get the message across well enough (and so docs are a good idea, but not enough).

[Gaanja]

REX: I agree that many experiences learnt wrt design changes and ideas are hard to get across a few successive teams even with docs. But when a team repeatedly fails to pass scrutiny, its just about sticking to the rule book and avoiding mistakes done earlier. I guess at least to this extent, the docs should help. There are teams which clear scrutiny in one year participate in dynamics, but the next year fail scrutiny again by making the same mistakes they rectified (by getting more ambitious about performing in dynamics and losing sight of essential things).

Also, I don know how many teams use the scrutiny checklist to do a pre-shipping and a pre-arriving-at-the-event check. This could really help.

Edit: these sheets are made available online by FSG. It should apply for any competition I guess

[Rex Chan]

It is standard practice for our team to go through the rules with someone outside the current team (usually a past team member) at least once before comp. It's usually a 3 stage process: current team makes the car ready, external scrut happens and the team notes any problems, fixes them, and gets rescrut by outside person. It's usually the Integration (tech team leader) team's job track any rules compliance issues up til comp.

I would say it's standard practice on any team serious about competing at comp to do a mock scrut before comp. Since we're pretty new at it all the time, we stay on the conservative side, and usually get through scrut with minimal issues. In 2010 and 2011, we were one of the early teams to pass scrut and all 3 tests (tech, tilt, noise). If you can leave comp early on Friday afternoon cos you're all done, you're doing pretty well.

Actually, if you're still going through scrut on Saturday, you're losing time to do Accel, Skidpad and AutoX. And the lines get really long (although I realise we have it good in AUS compared to the 100+ team comps)

[The_Man]

Gaanja asks more relevant questions and Rex is correct that these are exactly the same issues team abroad have faced. So if we can stop starting every sentence with because I am from India and have lack of resources we did this, it'll be good as this is the story of any other team.

That brings me to an other point. A lot of teams returning from the competitions come back having been awed by the Tu Grazs and the Tu Delfts. This leads to the point where teams conclude that to do well they need to the have all the things that these teams have. The talk will be about Carbon Fiber tubs, Launch Control, Rear Wheel Steering, etc. Sometimes these 'glamorous things' cause the simple things to be ignored. The stuff that did not make these teams competitive even with respect to the newer and less experienced teams.

What is important to understand is that these teams too started out at some point of time and they did not invest time, money and effort into the fancy stuff until they perfected the simple stuff and found that the only way to do things better is the advanced technologies. A good thumb rule (inspired from the 'Big Bird') if that do it only if it going to give you more points at the competition. A launch control is pointless (pun intended) when you don't pass tech and spending 3 months on suspension geometry and then manufacturing something that is 3 centimeters off is a waste of 50% of your design time.

A good solution is aim to get a 'basic' car running 4-5 months before the competition and then if there are enhancements add them on to the car and prove it is better/more reliable to make it a permanent feature. Essentially have a running and 100% rule compliant car at any given time during these 4-5 months. 'Easier said than done' - I know, but the teams who have had one shot at a car before are easily capable of doing this by keeping things simple.

Originally posted by AngryIndian:
The idea of asking someone from SAE India to conduct a seminar was stupid. I am not even goingto follow up with them. They have graduated from the same colleges when the education system was worse and worked in the same companies when corruption was more. I have realized that the only way performance of Indian tea,ms will improve is if:-

1. The population of India decreases
2. The number of engineering jobs increases
3. The education system improves drastically
4. Companies hire on the basis of talent not academic performance.
5. There is a support system from the government, universities and companies for improving innovation.

If anyone hjas solutions to these problems please suggest

Otherwise, be prepared to be shocked with the performance of Indian teams for the next 5 years. Better concentrate on improving results of UK teams which is the center of motorsports and still underperform. Results might be more immediate there.

1. The population of India decreases

The population of India is it's strength as much as it is it's weakness. The high population and democratic government is one of the reasons India is at it current stage of development. Even if this means the labor prices are low but some other more developed countries have more unemployment than India.

2. The number of engineering jobs increases

I am not even going to Google the stats about engineering jobs in India. Move around Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi, Pune and see how many employed engineers you'll meet. A few years ago that was not the case.

3. The education system improves drastically

Well Formula Student is a top avenue to improve our education system. A lot of universities in India support Formula Student. Now it is up to the students to take this initiative further. It's a cycle, do well at a competition your education system has benefited, now transfer the knowledge you have gained.

4. Companies hire on the basis of talent not academic performance.

Companies hire on the basis of Academic because you have not given them any other basis to hire upon. A typical CV contains their degrees, marks in competitive exams and in the interview we harp on about these things. If you notice, the day a company sees a (genuine) deviation from this they are quick to grab that student.

5. There is a support system from the government, universities and companies for improving innovation.

This is feeling has to be mutual. How many of us think about our University per say? University is a place were we go to get our degrees and it ends there. The aim is get out of University using the shortest and the easiest way possible. Have you heard of anyone stay back in University to do an extra year of Formula SAE? The government gives the IITs and the NITs highly subsidized high quality education, funds a lot of research and companies are more than will to help if you approach them nicely without ulterior objectives.

My point being it is easy for us as students and young Indian to sit in an arm chair and blame it on the culture, education system and the government. Yes there is corruption, issues, unfairness and gaping holes in the system but it's upto the new generation to fix this rather than crib. If we look around things are changing here, FAST.

(@AngryIndian: When I say 'you' in this post I do not mean you personally but I am referring to the Indian Student. So please do not take this personally. It's a discussion I am trying to have)

[Pradeep]

Hi,

While I am not part of the Formula Manipal team anymore, I would like to inform you that the current team is working on a 2 year model i.e. after 2011 the next team will be participating at 2013 competition to ensure that we have enough time for testing.

Also the alumni of Formula Manipal will be conducting a "design review" for the 2013 team either on 4-5th August or 11-12th August 2012 (dates to be confirmed by tonight). I would be more than happy if any of you gentlemen would care to join us, provided you are upto making a trip to Manipal (which is in Karnataka btw , not in north-east)- its a beautiful little town and its even more beautiful during the monsoon.

We trying to arrange a webinar as a lot of our alumni are studying in US/Europe, so you can also join us there if you want. But I think coming in person would be better in terms of exchange of ideas and interaction.

Anyone who is interested can send me a email.

Cheers,

[RaceCatt69]