creativity in innovation - tata · pdf filerusting and lower the maintenance needs of the...

Creativity in innovationIt’s that time of the year when the creativity and ingenuity unfolding across

the wide expanse of the Tata group gets feted and celebrated. Innovista 2010,the latest edition of the annual commemoration of exceptional innovation

endeavours in the group, saw 2,618 teams from 73 Tata companiesshowcasing their work. Every person, team and company that participated in

the Innovista event was a winner, some of them more so than others. Webring you the outstanding efforts in the three categories under which the

entries were evaluated: Promising Innovation (ideas that have been fruitfullyimplemented); The Leading Edge (ideas for the future); and Dare to Try

(innovations that have yet to become fully successful).

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Promising InnovationTATA MOTORS

Painting the planet greenBy using a new pre-treatment process based onnanotechnology at its paint shop, Tata Motors isreaping green benefits and cost savings

When Tata Motors Chairman Ratan Tata

inaugurated the new paint shop at Tata Motors’

Jamshedpur plant in March 2010, he was especially

pleased. The project was one after the chairman’s own

heart — it used a new, innovative and immensely

environmental-friendly approach to the plant’s paint

pre-treatment process by using nanotechnology.

Not only did the new process cut down energy use

and water consumption, it also reduced the generation of

highly toxic effluent sludge that is a severe health hazard.

The positive environmental effect of the new pre-

treatment process is so high that it has won the Tata

Innovista Promising Innovation award.

The project started three years ago when Tata Motors

Jamshedpur needed a new paint shop for its truck chassis

long members (there are different paint shops for long

members, cross members, cab body, etc). The painting

process for the metal parts of trucks and other vehicles is

always an elaborate process. These metal members need to

go through pre-treatment stages before they can be

painted; this is to make them more resistant to corrosion

and to improve the adhesion of primer and paint.

Chemical conditioning The pre-treatment process is highly energy, water

and chemical intensive. It takes several stages to get the

metal free of dust, grime and grease. It then has to be

coated with a thin layer of chemical that enables the paint

to stick to the metal uniformly. All of these processes are

vital in that they help extend the metal’s life span, reduce

rusting and lower the maintenance needs of the truck

chassis members (and give Tata Motors customers a

product of superior quality).

The electro-coat pre-treatment technology that Tata

Motors follows at all its plants, including the Jamshedpur

long member paint shop, is a state-of-the art cathode

electrode deposition (CED) process that is being used by

top auto manufacturers the world over. The metal parts

undergo several stages, the most critical ones being those

of activation and phosphating, in which the long

members are immersed in hot baths that use vast

quantities of water, titanium salts and chemical

compounds containing zinc, nickel and manganese.

Thinking green Though this pre-treatment process is a high-

technology affair that ensures a quality product, it has

several disadvantages. The biggest is the effluent generated

by the plant in the form of a sludge that contains heavy

metals (such as nickel). This sludge is toxic and extremely

hazardous. Treating the sludge according to

environmental norms requires installing several pieces of

equipment, namely a clarifier, a filter press and an

incinerator. The incinerator discharges smoke, causing air

pollution. The solids left over are toxic and have to be

stored in a secured landfill that takes up space at the plant

site. The secured landfill itself is another potential

biohazard as any seepage will result in land and

groundwater contamination.

At Jamshedpur there was an added concern: the

landfill area was nearly full. The

company had to find a new site, thus

making more land redundant as well as

adding to the risk of pollution. Another

environmental issue was the use of vast

baths that needed as much as 60,000

litres of clean water and tonnes of fuel

for heating. This water is heavily

polluted and has to be treated intensely

before it can be discharged.

All in all, however efficient the

CED process, there was no gainsaying

that it had a huge environmental

impact. Three years ago, when Tata

Motors needed a new paint shop, the

project team in charge of setting up theThe Tata Motors team received the ‘Promising Innovation’ award from TataMotors Group CEO and MD Carl-Peter Forster

49Tata Rev iew September 2010

50 Tata Rev iew September 2010

shop decided to take a fresh look at pre-treatment

technologies. “The climate change initiative is being taken

seriously in the company. We are also very conscious of

environmental concerns. We wanted to find a better,

cleaner way of handling the pre-treatment process,” says

team member NDS Murty, assistant general manager

(central planning) at Tata Motors.

Research showed that there was an alternative to the

pre-treatment process, one that was being used globally

on aluminium and alloy surfaces. This is a

nanotechnology process that uses a bath of zirconium

oxide instead of conventional heavy metals. The team, a

cross-functional one with members from quality

assurance and planning, decided that the option had

merit. It then started interacting with chemical suppliers

to find a variant of zirconium oxide that would work on

the mild steel used for truck components.

The chemical solutions underwent several stages of

R&D and testing jointly carried out by Tata Motors and

the chemical supplier Henkle Surface Coatings. After one

year of intense testing the team came up with a zirconium

compound (called Tectalis 5800T) that worked as well on

hot-rolled steel as it did on aluminium. In the lab, the

metal coating withstood all possible tests. “When we told

the senior management about the nanotechnology results,

they were very supportive,” says team member Vikram

Khanna, manager, central planning.

The nanotechnology process has several advantages

over the conventional method: it uses less energy, water

and chemicals; it reduces water and air pollution

drastically and, most significantly, it generates no toxic

sludge, saving the company the need to invest in a new

landfill. The waste products from the new process are

useful iron hydroxides, which are a raw-material input for

the pigment industry. As an added benefit, there is also a

saving in natural resources; the new process uses far less

material — just 60-120mg as opposed to the earlier 2,000-

3,000mg — to give the same coating effect.

Risk and reputation In spite of all the advantages, the team was conscious

that the new technology was novel; they decided to play it

safe. The compound was tested rigorously by BASF, the

German company, to provide third-party validation. All

in all, the new nanotechnology method was tested for two

years. “We could not take any risk at all,” says project

leader Vinay Kumar, senior manager, quality assurance.

“The paint shop costs about `630 million and twelve

months to set up. Even more critically, if the shop did not

perform to standards it would result in a shutdown of the

entire truck assembly line for three months, an immense

loss in terms of revenue and materials.”

When the deadline for setting up the paint shop

came around, the team decided to further mitigate the

risk by setting up the new pre-treatment shop in such a

way that it could be converted back to the old

technology in a short time. Even the major equipment

such as filter press, heat exchanger, aqua therm heater

etc — were bought and kept as a ready backup. “After

all, this was the first time the process was being used in

Asia,” explains team member Ashok Bareja, senior

manager (central planning).

Though the team and the plant management were

slightly anxious, the changeover turned out to be a

smooth success. Today the new nanotechnology pre-

treatment is running smoothly and already revealing its

advantages. The paint shop’s consumption of diesel has

been reduced by 300,000 litres; its carbon dioxide

emissions have come down by 900 tonnes per annum; the

water usage is lower by 800,000 litres; and the risk to

human health, flora and fauna is dramatically lesser. “This

is a far superior method. We are now trying to make it

work on cold-rolled sheets,” says team member and

quality assurance officer Arijit Das.

The success of the project is also visible in its impact

across the rest of Tata Motors, given that the new process

has already been finalised for the new cross-member paint

shop and is being tested at nine other paint shops at

different plants. With more changeovers on the cards, Tata

Motors’ commitment to the environment will be

reaffirmed with every vehicle that rolls out of its gates. �

TATA STEELSunshine in slimeTata Steel has bid goodbye to the threat posed by thewaste generated in the mining of iron ore, and saidhello to a gainful opportunity that promisesmultiple rewards

How do you live with a problem that refuses to go

away? You can try burying it, as Tata Steel has been

doing for most of its existence with the waste generated in

the mining of iron ore, and then keep burying more and

more of it. But there is no permanence with such six-feet-

under solutions, at least not in the steel industry. What

the company needed was something more durable, more

sophisticated and a whole lot more sustainable. It needed

a bit of innovation.

That’s what led a 30-member team fronted by

professionals from Tata Steel’s research and development

wing to devise a methodology whereby the slime created

while mining raw iron ore for the iron particles that go

into the downstream steel-making process became a

resource rather than a cross to be carried forever.

Neutralising the slime threat has had its reward for the


team, winning it one of the three prizes in

the ‘promising innovation’ category at

Innovista 2010. More importantly, it has

opened a substantial window of

opportunity for the company.

Bridging the gapThere was a technology gap the

people at Tata Steel had to bridge for the

company to deal more effectively with the

slime it produced. Iron ore is a major raw

material for any steel-making company

and Tata Steel has its own captive mines, at

Noamundi in Jharkhand and at Joda in

Orissa. The impurities in the raw iron ore,

namely alumina and silica (also called gang

minerals), are separated at the mine site

through a process known as beneficiation. The usable iron

minerals are transported to the steel plant and the rejects,

or slime — fine in size and slurry in form — are stored at

the mine site in deep ponds.

The slime cannot be dumped just anywhere because

it will contaminate the land and the water. So Tata Steel,

and every other steelmaker in India, has to find land

within its mining area to bury the waste. This storage

situation has worsened in recent times, taking up more

and more land due to the huge increase in steel

production, especially so over the past two decades.

This slime contains some amount of iron that

can be used in steelmaking, but there has thus far

been no technology to extract it from the slurry.

The technology gap that existed was about isolating iron

minerals of such fine size, below 45 microns in Tata Steel’s

case, from the slurry. “Our innovation is all about

addressing this technology challenge: How to separate

iron that is embedded in waste material and make it

worthy of use in steelmaking,” says Asim Kumar

Mukherjee, head researcher, R&D, Tata Steel.

An added advantage of the innovation is that Tata

Steel can now do something with the waste that remains

after the second separation process. The company

collaborated with the Council for Scientific and Industrial

Research, a national laboratory, to make bricks, tiles and

pavement blocks from the slime. “It is up to us to decide

how we want to go about this part of the innovation,

because we can make designer tiles even from the waste

material,” says Mr Mukherjee. “We could market this, but

we are inclined to use the construction material within

our mine premises, for pathways and such, and to help

the local community.”

The effort to cope more effectively with the

slime began some 20 years back and got intensified over

the last five years. Tata Steel had, in 2005, started a jigging

process — the first of its kind in India and only the third

in the world — but it clearly needed to do more. The

current cleansing endeavour started towards the end of

2008 and it has been tried out at a pilot plant in

Jamshedpur. “We are at a point today where we can, with

a certain amount of investment, expand and make this a

permanent solution,” says Shailesh Verma, chief of the

company’s mines in Joda. “We may not need to bury our

waste in ponds anymore.”

Working out the dynamicsA full-fledged plant for a slime-neutralisation

operation would cost about `900 million and this can be

recouped in four-five years, says Mr Mukherjee. “In 20

years, we could save about `2,600 million through this

innovation. This makes for a strong business case in a

company such as Tata Steel.” However, the financial-

benefits equation of this innovation has other dimensions

to it. “There is the threat-mitigation component, which

could have compromised the sustainability of our

operations. You cannot put a cost to that.”

Then there is the saving of water that the innovation

can deliver. “At present we drain down a lot of water with

the slime during the separation process; this water is a

limited resource,” explains Mr Mukherjee. “We have put

ourselves in a position where we can recover billions of

gallons of water, which can be re-circulated in the plant.”

Estimating the cost of the slime-separation innovation is

near impossible, but the basic expenditure on it can be

pegged at around `200 million.

The slime issue is a menace not just to Tata Steel

but the entire steel industry in India, which may explain

why the Union Ministry of Steel and Mines has

designated this concept as a national project. What it

means is that Tata Steel can make its innovation available

to others, maybe at a price. “What’s clear is that with the

technology in place and the patents we have filed for it,

we are in the driver’s seat,” adds Mr Mukherjee. “We can

The Tata Steel team received the ‘Promising Innovation’ award from Tata Sons director RK Krishna Kumar

show the world we are far ahead in this field.”

The waste problem is as old as Tata Steel itself, but

the severity of it was never as much as it has been in the

recent past, and it is getting worse by the day. “We had to

do something,” says Mr Mukherjee. “What we have been

doing, primarily, is addressing a threat. Now an

opportunity has arisen during the course of addressing

the threat. This way we can be winners twice over.”

Teamwork redeemedMr Mukherjee and Mr Verma insist that what Tata

Steel has come up with is a disruptive technology, not

merely an improvement on what was. “It is the first of

its kind in the world and it is tailor-made for the Indian

milieu,” says Mr Mukherjee. Elsewhere in the world,

mining iron ore means having to contend only with

silica waste, but in the Indian subcontinent there’s also

alumina to consider, and this can be deadly for a steel

company’s downstream operations. “Which is why

our situation is unique, and which is also why our

solution is unique.”

The four-member team from Tata Steel that

came to Mumbai to receive the Innovista award —

Mr Mukherjee, Mr Verma and researchers Manindra

Manna and John Samuel Thella — had plenty of

support from across the company and the solid backing

of the top management on the journey to realising its

objective. “The idea germinated in our R&D

department, but so many people made decisive

contributions,” says Mr Mukherjee. “Arun Mishra from

operations and Sanjay Srivatsav from our raw materials

group were particularly helpful, as were those from our

technology group and our business analysts.”

All the support from the extended Tata Steel

organisation could not insulate the team from setbacks.

“We had to suffer a lot of failures before getting to this

point,” says Mr Mukherjee. “We were pushed into corners

we thought we could not come out of. There was a time

early on in the project when we thought we should try

out the separation with relatively less impure waste. This

approach meant we could not tackle 60 per cent of the

slime. What we had managed was a 40 per cent solution.

Then we had a break: we were able to find a way to

separate the iron minerals selectively. This was the

breakthrough we cherished the most.”

The high innovation quotient in the Tata Steel

organisation was a critical factor in the team coming

good. The company has an apex council for R&D — a

department that is enriched by more than 120

professionals — and this is chaired by the managing

director himself. “Innovation runs in our company’s

bloodstream, and it begins in the shop floor,” says

Mr Verma. “We have intense interactions with our

colleagues across the world, in Britain, the Netherlands

and elsewhere. We share our experiences and our

expertise. The inclination to learn — that is our big

strength. Then there’s team spirit and the human

resources we possess. We have in our midst some of the

best minds in the business.”

“More than 90 per cent of innovation is

about acquiring knowledge from one domain and

applying it in another, and so it has been in our case,”

concludes Mr Mukherjee. “Actually, there is nothing

exceptional about what we have achieved. All we

have done is take fundamental science and utilise it

to our benefit.” �

TATA MOTORS

Counting cost, reapingbenefitsThe team that developed the Nano’s engine had tocope with numerous challenges before getting itright with the heart of the small car

It was the price that caught everyone’s attention. Prior

to the development of the Nano, cars were big-ticket

items, symbols of luxury and aspiration, indicators of

status and position. It was the image of a family perched

precariously on a two-wheeler that led Ratan Tata, the

Chairman of Tata Motors, to consider manufacturing a

car priced around `1 lakh, an automobile that could

provide safe transport to India’s middle class.

The announcement that Tata Motors would

manufacture a low-cost car created unprecedented

excitement, with ordinary people, automotive companies

and the media everywhere speculating about the shape

and nature the vehicle would eventually assume. Critics

sniggered that it would be impossible to make the car at

the price that had been set.

And so began the challenge that galvanised

Tata Motors into action. “The chairman put the idea

before us and then the thinking process started,” recalls

Narendra Kumar Jain, general manager (engines) at the

company’s Engineering Research Centre (ERC) in Pune.

Engine troubleThe Nano development team was divided into a

number of engineering excellence centres, and each was

given cost targets within which to work. With the engine

as the aggregate, the boundaries included the exhaust

system, the cooling system, the intake system and the fuel

system. These had to achieve acceptable performance

criteria, be economical on fuel consumption and comply

with tough emission regulations.

“Our first thought was to purchase the engine from


an external supplier,” says Mr Jain. “The sourcing team

was given the task of sourcing the engine. Unfortunately,

none of the over 100 suppliers that were contacted could

meet our cost target. They were at least 50 per cent

higher than our target.”

There could be no compromise on cost and that’s

where the team encountered its first hurdle. There seemed

no way to break the impasse until ERC came up with the

idea of designing and manufacturing the engine in-house.

The task was delegated to Mr Jain’s team,

consisting of Mangesh Nimbalkar (performance and

durability development), T Sethuramalingam

(calibration and vehicle emissions), Hemant Malekar

(design) and Kedar Gokhale (design for suppliers’

parts). All of them were leaders in their own fields and

headed teams of other skilled people.

Smoothening the driveEven as the team set out to tackle the challenge,

doubt arose. Some of the people on the team were

afraid about what might happen if they failed to

achieve their objectives.

Mr Tata was quick to reassure the team members

that if they failed they should not feel bad, since no

one had done what they were setting out to do. He

added that he felt sure that if anyone could pull off the

task, it would be this team. The words acted as a great

morale booster to the team. There was renewed

commitment and enthusiasm.

“We decided not to use the classical approach of

downsizing the technology as it exceeded our cost

target by approximately 50 per cent,” says Mr Jain.

The development of a one-cylinder engine, as is

used in an auto rickshaw, would have helped the team

adhere to the budget. Yet they consciously chose to

develop a two-cylinder engine. “We made a concept

vehicle with a one-cylinder engine and test-drove it,” says

Mr Jain. “Then we realised that it would not offer a

smooth and comfortable driving experience.”

The team began working on the concept design of

the engine. The first design was for a 538cc engine that

could deliver 16hp. The plan at that time was not to

exceed 20hp, thereby fitting in the budget. “With some

modifications, we could have had 18hp,” adds Mr Jain.

“We made an engine that cost us approximately 40 per

cent more than our target. But we believed there was

scope for improvement. So we went back to work.”

Subsequently, the team made another design, with

a 554cc engine that could deliver 26hp. A third upgraded

version consisted of a 586cc engine which could deliver

31hp. The improvement enhanced the confidence of the

team members. They had managed to double the power

while maintaining the cost. It was now time to make a

full-fledged design.

Optimising costsThe chairman was pleased with the efforts put in

by the team. Encouraged, the team worked on lowering

costs and improving the performance further. The team

refined its efforts and brought out a 624cc engine that

could deliver 33hp. At the time of detailed designing,

the cost was brought down to just 30 per cent more

than the set target.

In 2007, Tata Motors manufactured 15-20 cars at

these specifications. The development was a

vindication of all the efforts put in by the team. The

driving experience had improved, convincing the

management and the operating teams that they were

on the right track.

Even as the engine team and others in the

company concentrated their energies on fine-tuning

their work, critics within and outside India declared

that Tata Motors would never meet the emission

regulations. In reality, the Nano was already fit to

comply with BS-III norms in December 2007, when

only 13 major cities in India were required to be

compliant with this standard. The

rest of the country was still adhering

to BS-II norms.

It was a time when any

additional improvement would

have meant a huge increase in costs.

And yet, in December 2007 at the

Chairman’s behest, the team got

ready to equip the car to comply

with BS-IV norms. Considering that

a large part of the country had

embraced BS-III emission norms

only in April 2010, when 13 major

cities switched to BS-IV, this was a

huge achievement. Currently,

the car meets BS IV emissions andThe Tata Motors team received the ‘Promising Innovation’ award from Tata Sons director RK•Krishna Kumar


ADVINUS THERAPEUTICSSuccour in sight Advinus Therapeutics is well on its way todiscovering a drug that works better thancurrently available treatments in taming thedreaded kala-azar disease

The fate of the millions who suffer from visceral

leishmaniasis (VL), also known as kala-azar, is

indeed pathetic. It is not a disease that captures headlines

across newspapers or demands attention on the airwaves.

Yet the plight of its victims is no less heartrending than

that of the victims of other diseases.

According to data released by the World Health

Organisation (WHO), the disease is endemic in 88

countries, including Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Brazil and

Sudan. Nearly 12 million people are infected with the

disease while a further 350 million are at risk of

contracting it. Victims typically suffer from high fever,

enlargement of the liver and the spleen, anaemia, nausea,

pain in the abdomen and weight loss. If left untreated,

kala-azar is fatal, claiming tens of thousands of lives each

year. The disease strikes in flood-affected areas and

infections happen through the bite of the sandfly.

Despite the gravity of the situation, there are few

pharmaceutical companies that consider it worthwhile

to expend effort on fighting the disease. “There are very

few drugs available to combat the disease,” says Vadiraj

Gopinath, associate director at Advinus. “Very few

pharmaceutical companies are interested in working on

finding a cure for this disease as there is hardly any

financial return.”

The few available drugs, which cost between $300

and $3,000 (`1,350 and `0.135 million) per treatment

course, are prohibitively expensive and inaccessible to

sufferers, most of whom are poor. Not fully efficacious,

the drugs often expose these people to side effects.

Besides, the drugs have to be administered intravenously,

requiring hospitalisation and continuous monitoring and

adding to the financial burden of the patient.

A new direction“Advinus joined the Geneva-based Drugs for

Neglected Diseases initiative and decided to take up the

challenge of developing a drug that is effective and low-

priced,” says Mr Gopinath. “It is also a part of our

company mission to develop drugs for neglected diseases.

Our target is to come up with an oral drug that is

affordable and effective.”

Mr Gopinath and his colleagues at Advinus, Jakir

Pinjari, Manjunath Moger and others, are actively

involved in the VL programme. While Advinus worked

on drug design, synthesis, druggability (the ability of a

portion of a genome to be targeted by a drug) and safety

aspects, the Central Drug Research Institute, Lucknow,

and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical

Medicine became screening centres to conduct in vivo

and in vitro efficacy studies.

The challenge of finding an effective cure for

kala-azar presented many hurdles to the team. “It was

almost like setting out to make a discovery while being

blindfolded,” says Mr Gopinath. There is no known

mechanism of action to support the design of new

scaffolds, posing a challenge to the medicinal chemist.

Also, the team had to develop relevant in vitro and in vivo

models for the purpose of screening, posing a challenge to

Dare to Try

can be upgraded to Euro-V and BS-V with

minimal modifications.

The commencement of the production phase

brought down the Nano’s cost further, from 30 per cent

higher than the target to just 15 per cent over it. As

volumes increased, the cost could be reduced further.

Meanwhile, the team continued to research ways to get

better. By the time the car was launched in March 2009,

they had managed to develop a 624cc engine that could

deliver 35hp.

Alongside, the fuel economy was improved. Starting

with a fuel economy of 18kmpl (km per litre), the team

improved it further. “When we got the vehicles certified,

we had achieved a fuel economy of 23.6kmpl under

standard test conditions,” says Mr Jain. “This is very

important from the middle class point of view. Buying a

car is one thing but fuel economy is equally important.”

The beauty of the Nano’s engine is that it has

become a benchmark on cost, triggering low-cost product

development across the global automotive industry. It also

has the potential for application in other vehicles.

Despite having wowed the world, Mr Jain and his

cost-busting colleagues are not about to sit on their oars.

Having filed seven patent applications and one design

application, they are continuing with their efforts to make

the Nano better still. �


the biologist. The chemical synthesis of the

molecules was also challenging.

In spite of the difficulties, the team

succeeded in making more than 350

compounds. The first step was to work in

an extra-cellular environment, also known

as in vitro work. Later, the team created

animal models, in mice and hamsters, in

order to test the efficacy of the

compounds in killing the parasite. The

compounds were found to be highly active

in the in vitro models. However, the

activity in the mouse and the hamster

models was not up to the desired level.

Says Mr Pinjari: “We infected the

hamster with the parasite and counted the

parasite load by taking a biopsy of the spleen.

Then the infected animals were treated with test

compounds. They were given the doses once every day for

five days to ensure that the compound would be enough to

kill the parasite load. The goal was to achieve complete

removal of the parasite load.” The scientists took another

biopsy of the spleen on the seventh day after the treatment

and again on the 28th day to see if there was a relapse. “We

found that we had been successful in killing up to 84 per

cent of the parasites, but once the treatment was stopped

the parasite count increased again.”

Aspiring for successThe experiment taught the team valuable lessons.

Despite major improvements in in vitro activity and

selectivity, none of the molecules presented all the features

that were required to qualify it as a potential drug. The

team took the checkmate in the right spirit and began to

work on the challenge with renewed vigour. Encouraged

by the support and guidance of their chief executive

officer and managing director, Rashmi Barbhaiya, a

renowned scientist himself, the optimisation efforts

continued. The learning efforts have now been applied in

a new series that has resulted in two new compounds,

both of which are showing great potential for being

developed into drug candidates.

“Our goal is to develop a safe and effective oral drug

for human beings,” explains Mr Pinjari. “The drug

treatments available currently, with antimony compounds

and antibiotics, have reported a lot of side effects. The

current drug treatments pose another challenge as the

parasite may develop a resistance to them.”

A lot of work remains to be done. “The process of

drug discovery is long,” says Mr Gopinath. “We have to

demonstrate the efficacy and safety of the drug on a

number of parameters. We are still in the early stages.”

Once the efficacy of the drug is proved beyond

doubt in the case of animals, it will be studied in a

detailed manner at the preclinical and clinical stages. Only

then will it qualify as a molecule, and the team can take it

to the concerned authorities for testing and approval.

According to WHO, India is one of the countries

worst affected by visceral leishmaniasis, accounting for

about 50 per cent of the total number of victims.

Advinus Therapeutics’ success with the new drug will

spell good news for the millions of sufferers of the

disease in India and around the world. The team’s initial

failure has spurred them on to try again. Clearly, they

never fail who fail in a great cause. �

THE TINPLATE COMPANY OFINDIAIn search of thinnessThe Tinplate Company of India is within touchingdistance of crowning glory in its quest to find apioneering capping solution for the food packagingindustry

It’s a kind of closure the professionals at the Tinplate

Company of India (TCIL) reckon will open up a brand

new pathway to growth, and it has to do with mastering a

technology that puts a thin lid — and the thinner the

better — on all things edible and packaged.

TCIL has been sweating for the better part of three

years on an innovation that involves crafting, through a

unique methodology, what are termed twist-off lug caps.

These lug caps, or closures, as they are known in industry

parlance, are commonly used to seal glass bottles and

other containers in processed food packaging for jams,

pickles, jellies and other edibles.

The nine-member team working on the project is

close enough to success for their effort to be deemed

The Advinus Therapeutics team received the ‘Dare to Try’ award from Tata Steel vice chairman B Muthuraman


worthy of a prize in the ‘Dare to Try’ category at

Innovista 2010, and they have done more than a fair

share of trying in the search for a never-before solution

that promises rich rewards. At the heart of this

endeavour lies a technology called DR-09. Only by

getting on top of it can the innovators at TCIL triumph.

TCIL takes its name from tinplate, a thin sheet of

metal made of iron or steel that is coated with tin to

prevent rusting. This metal is the raw material used by

the packaging industry to make the cans, closures and

containers that store the processed food seen on

supermarket shelves. The material the company produces

goes to can fabricators and fillers, who in turn shape and

fashion the cans, tins and bottles that the processed food

industry needs to package its wares. TCIL receives the

raw material for its manufacturing from Tata Steel, its

parent company.

Thick to thinLug caps are a big-selling item due to their

versatility and compatibility with packaging formats

such as glass and other material used in food packaging.

The lug-cap segment is growing at 15-20 per cent per

annum in India and the market needs some 35,000

tonnes of it every year. The market in the regions

surrounding India, with the food-processing hubs of

Dubai and Bangkok at the forefront, is about the same

in size but growing even faster. The proximity of the two

hubs to TCIL makes the India-and-Asia business

proposition pretty alluring for the company.

In India conventional lug caps generally use the

DR-08 technology and are made of material that is

0.20mm thick. Everybody in the tinplate business, as

elsewhere, is trying to go south on cost, and the way to

do that is to make the metal thinner. Thin truly is in: the

thinner you can get, the more cans, lug caps, etc your

customer can make from the same tonnage of metal, and

the better your profitability.

The thinning bit cannot go on

indefinitely, of course, because there is a

certain amount of mechanical strength

that the material requires. To get under

the 0.20mm thickness threshold,

manufactures need to come up with a

different quality of material. That is the

domain of DR-09 and the material that

emerges from it is 0.18mm thick.

Worldwide, DR-09 is produced in a

continuous-annealing furnace, using a

heat-treatment process. This furnace takes

about `2,500 million to put up and the

cost can only be justified if the

manufacturer’s scale of operation is

voluminous. The global big boys in the

tinplate business — Nippon Steel, Arcelor Mittal and

Tata Steel Europe among them — employ the DR-09

technology and they each produce between 1 and 1.5

million tonnes of the metal a year. TCIL produces less

that 0.4 million tonnes.

The large manufacturers possess continuous-

annealing furnaces, for large-scale operations, as well as

batch-annealing furnaces, which can be employed to

make smaller quantities of tinplate. “TCIL, by virtue of

its design and operational scale, handles relatively small

load sizes, and it uses the batch-annealing process for this

purpose,” says SJ Dey, a divisional head with the

company. “The problem, and the challenge, confronting

us was this: how do we manufacture DR-09 material in a

batch-annealing furnace.”

Cracking the codeThere was no doubt that the company had to crack

the DR-09 code. Its customers had started importing the

superior DR-09 and, consequently, TCIL has been seeing

its market shrink and its margins squeezed. Something

had to be done.

Going the continuous-annealing way to make DR-

09 was ruled out due to cost and return-on-investment

factors. The batch-annealing methodology was the only

option, and this had never been thought of, much less

made workable, anywhere in the world.

The thinking on the project began in 2007 and

work on it kicked off in 2008. The length of time taken

can be attributed to the uniqueness of the undertaking.

“Something like this had never been conceptualised;

there was no roadmap, no readymade pathway,” says

Mr Dey. “By the end of 2009 we had our batch-annealing

DR-09 and we matched its property for property with the

original. Then we went to application trials with it at the

facility of one of our key customers, who was convinced

enough to take the lead in trying out the product.”

The TCIL team has not been victorious thus far in

The team from The Tinplate Company of India received the ‘Dare to Try’award from Tata Steel vice chairman B Muthuraman


pulling off this minor wonder, but it is close enough to

see the winning post. The main hurdles have been

overcome and its product matches the DR-09 standards

by up to 80 percent. The remaining 20 percent is what is

tripping up the company’s people and that is where they

are now concentrating their energies. “No customer will

accept an 80-percent product,” adds Mr Dey. “The

resultant uncertainty is not manageable from either a

business or a costing perspective.”

“We thought we were through,” says Joydeep

Chatterjee, deputy manager, innovation and technology.

“Then we realised there were some latent requirements

we still needed to figure out. This is when it dawned on

us that TCIL by itself cannot solve the problem, that we

need outside assistance, a higher degree of analysis and

research. We approached Tata Steel Europe and the

analysis support their R&D people provided has been a

great help.”

TCIL may have failed, but not entirely. In two of the

three lug-cap segments, its product was good enough; the

third — the bigger lug-cap segment — was, and remains,

the final frontier that remains to be conquered. “We have

come to understand that there are some parameters at the

customer end that are influencing the way our product is

behaving, why it is falling short of requirements,” says

Mr Dey. “These parameters have to be standardised and

that is the task our team is grappling with.”

Payoff timeAs of now, TCIL expects to get its product right and

ready by the end of 2010. If and when the company

manages that, it will be able to get material that’s thinner

still than what conventional DR-09 delivers, 0.16mm to

the latter’s 0.18mm. Mr Chatterjee says, “That should

translate into more cans and caps for our customers, and

it will secure a substantial advantage for us in the market.

Also, if we pull it off we will have a product that needs 40

per cent less natural resources to manufacture.”

The lug-cap innovation has the potential to add

roughly `170 million to TCIL’s turnover, not a bad return

on an investment of about `2.5 million. Besides the nine

people from TCIL who worked on the project, there were

two researchers from Tata Steel Europe who chipped in

with analysis and testing support and there was the

backing of Tata Steel. “Our top management has been

more than supportive through all three phases of this

project,” says Mr Dey. “We have had our share of

setbacks, particularly in the first two stages, but at no

point was the project stalled.”

TCIL has some 1,800 employees, most of them in

the shop floor. It does not have a dedicated R&D

division, but what it does boast is a team approach to

problem-solving, and this comes in handy when

innovative concepts are taken on board.

“Our innovation efforts work at three levels:

industry, company and shop floor,” says Mr Chatterjee,

who led the four-member team — which also included,

besides Mr Dey, deputy manager Amit Roy and senior

engineer Santigopal Samanta — that came to Mumbai to

receive the Innovista award. “At the industry level, we are

constantly scouting the external environment and looking

at ways to ward off threats, competitive, regulatory and

others. Being innovative is one way of doing that.”

This also means evaluating the challenges

posed by the alternative packaging segments such as

high-density polyethylene, aluminium and tetra pack.

“There are innovations happening there, too, so we

have to be on our guard,” says Mr Chatterjee. “The

trick lies in preempting our adversaries.” TCIL is well

placed to do just that and make the most of these

profitable times, especially so if it can package its lug

caps equation well enough. �

CMCA sunny ideaBy questioning the fundamental approach to theuse of solar energy for illumination, the CMCteam has come up with an efficient andenvironment-friendly idea that uses fibre opticsto bring sunlight indoors

The three-man team from the embedded systems

unit at CMC Hyderabad took one of the most

time-tested routes to innovation — questioning a

cast-iron assumption. Akhilesh Bahuguna, senior IT

manager; Satyasekhar Akkala, senior IT manager; and

Kamalanaban Ganesan, manager, stepped back from

the issue of solar-cell efficiency to ask a fundamental

question: Why use solar cells at all?

It was a valid question to pose in a field where

billions of dollars are spent on improving the

efficiency of solar cells by as little as 0.5 per cent. Solar

cells are used to convert the sun’s energy into

electricity, which can then be used for heating, to

power machines, to provide lighting, etc. When they

looked at the use of solar cells for lighting, they had an

The Leading Edge


epiphany. “Why not,” they wondered, “cut out the

middleman — the solar cell itself?”

The middleman The laws of physics state that there is a limit to

how efficiently solar cells can convert light to

electricity. Currently, solar cells convert about 18 per

cent of incident light into electricity. Because the most

efficient light bulbs have a 13 per cent electricity-to-

light conversion efficiency, the current state-of-the-art

sunlight-electricity-light bulb scheme has a 3 per cent

overall efficiency. Theoretically, however, light

transported via fibre optics suffers hardly any loss. The

obvious question then, when it comes to solar energy

that is going to be used for illumination, is, why

bother converting it into electricity at all?

The last several decades have seen an

enhancement of solar-cell efficiency from around 12

per cent to approximately 18 per cent. Over that same

period, fibre-optic technology has improved to allow

the manufacture of larger, more flexible and more

efficient fibre-optic cables.

Fibre-optic cables are used in several areas,

primarily in the telecommunication sector, where they

are employed to transmit information in the form of

pulses of light; data is converted into digital bytes,

where a pulse of light represents a ‘1’ and its absence a

‘0’. Fibre optics is also at the heart of laparoscopic

surgery, where intensity of light is a significant factor.

In the solar lighting solution proposed by the

CMC team, cables carry intensified rays of light from

the sun into buildings, where they are then diffused to

provide lighting. With no solar cell in sight.

Mirror to the sunHere is where the idea gets converted into

engineering design. A critical component of the team’s

remarkable idea is the collection of adequate light

from the sun. To collect enough light, sunlight from a

relatively large area has to be aggregated (using

mirrors and lenses) and directed at the input end of a

fibre-optic cable.

In practise, this would require one large parabolic

mirror to capture a large area of sunlight and focus it

at a point where it passes through a converging lens to

become a narrow beam of light.

Through the use of successive lens pairs (a

diverging lens and then a converging lens), the beam

can be further narrowed and intensified until it has

been made capable of travelling through the aperture

of the fibre-optic cable.

At the other end, splitters are used to divide the

beam of light in the cable into multiple lower-intensity

beams that can travel to various locations in the

building. Light diffusers at the terminal ends of the

cables would then scatter the beams over a large area

to illuminate the room with the captured sunlight.

According to the CMC team, this method of

illuminating rooms using fibre optics can occur with

no loss of energy. Most of the equipment necessary for

the set-up already exists and need only, perhaps, be

optimised for efficiency if and when the idea receives

sufficient financing.

Having thought out how to turn on the lights

without consuming man-made energy, the CMC team

sat down to figure out how to turn them off. Their

solution was uncomplicated: The team proposes that

the lights be switched off by simply placing a cover

over the output ends of the cables.

Advantage: planetThe CMC team contends that the fibre-optic

solar lighting solution will save not only money but

also energy. Instead of using power plants that

consume fossil fuels and emit pollutants as they

produce electricity, this method utilises the sun's

natural energy.

Moreover, it seems more

environment friendly on a number

of fronts (even the copper used to make

electrical wires is much less abundant

than the silica used to make the glass of

fibre-optic cables).

The team also conceptualised

another way their energy-acquisition

method could fulfil a common need:

sunlight-powered cooking. In this case,

the undiffused sunlight will be aimed at

a hotplate, providing a hot surface on

which to cook.

Turning off the stove would be a

trickier matter, as the high amount ofThe CMC•team received ‘The Leading Edge’ award from Tata ConsultancyServices vice chairman S Ramadorai


energy required to heat the hotplate would necessitate

more care. The team proposes that this be done using

a mirror that can send the majority of the light back

through the cable and out into space. This two-way

transmission of energy has no analogue in electronics,

where current travels through wires like traffic on a

one-way street. But light can travel backwards in fibre-

optic cables without any problem.

Light on the horizonThe CMC team’s theory has been deemed

worthwhile on both scientific and innovative merit.

“It's so obvious, it ought to have been tried before,”

says Mr Bahuguna. Yet there are several practical

difficulties and limitations that need to be overcome

before the concept takes concrete shape.

Though the team is confident that the first step,

the aggregation of light, is possible in theory, they feel

that the challenge will be in aligning the equipment

correctly. Also, though the elasticity of fibre-optic

cables has improved greatly in recent years, it still may

prove a hurdle. And, of course, there remain the

limitations of cloudy days and night time.

If the idea does work, it will offer light that is

much cheaper, whose production causes no pollution,

and which is of a spectrum to which the human eye is

more sensitive (than to light produced by fluorescent

or incandescent bulbs). With so much potential to

power it forward, the hope is that the idea generated

by the team will soon see the light of day. �

CMCEar to the groundCMC is hoping its wireless system to collectagricultural data from sensors in the field willchange the way farming is practised in India

Governed by a sea of variables, the lot of the Indian

farmer is worsened by a lack of adequate,

accurate information. This is the cause of the many ills

Indian agriculture suffers from, among them low

yields and productivity, failed crops and falling soil

quality. But help may be on its way.

A unique information acquisition and

dissemination scheme being developed by a team at

CMC Hyderabad promises to change all this, by

improving the decision-making process in farming

communities across the country.

Indian farmers rely, for the most part, on

general information gathered from other farmers,

from seed company representatives, a look at the skies

above, or instinct. Such information is based on

agricultural history or weather patterns for the area.

But this may turn out to be way off the mark and

tends to offer general prescriptions to problems that

are often specific.

The four-member team at CMC Hyderabad

studied the issues at hand and realised that

information is the key to a good crop. If the farmer

has access to useful and reliable information at the

right time, it will lead to efficient use of resources,

higher yields and enhanced incomes. The best way to

do that, they found out after researching various

options, would be a sensor and wireless

communication system of the kind currently being

used by defence forces.

Towards techno-savvy farmingBusiness manager Sridhar CV; technology

consultant V Muralidhar; T Venkataswamy, now a

program manager with TCS in Mumbai; and associate

executive K Raju realised that the challenge in creating

an information chain for the farmer was that it had to

be seamless and robust and that access to the

information had to be easy and affordable.

While the technology they identified was tried

and tested, it had to be adapted and modified so that

farmers were not driven away by the complexity or the

price. Until then, their idea of creating smart farms all

over India would remain just that.

To that end, the team is researching the use of

small, coin-sized sensors that can be distributed in the

soil throughout an area of farmland. These low-power

sensors will measure the soil’s moisture content and

salinity, its nitrogen and phosphorus content and its

nutrient levels. This information will be relayed to the

farmer to help optimise the use of water and fertilizers.

The farmer benefits, as he optimises his use of water,

spends less on fertilizers and earns more from the higher

yields that his farm generates. The local environment

benefits, as groundwater contamination from the

overuse of fertilizers is minimised.

The sensors are commercially available, and the

team plans to use ZigBee, a wireless, radio-frequency

communication technology. The team chose ZigBee

because it supports hopping — the reception and

retransmission of the signal by one sensor to the next

— which reduces the power requirements and frees up

more options for the geometrical placement of the

sensors and the tower.

Eventually, the signal is sent from the sensors to

what the team calls a base station, which could be a

stationary structure or, eventually, even a mobile

phone. These base stations then transfers the data to

what are being termed agriculture information

dissemination centres.


Once the information collected

through the sensors is relayed to a

central point, it will be mapped with

relevant data from other sources and

analysed. The team believes that the

information, if used with local

weather forecasts and packages of

farming practices available from

local universities, could help

create highly accurate crop-

modelling algorithms.

The team is confident that the

models will be accurate if all the data

can be mapped. They believe they

could even provide farmers with a

suitable crop or list of crops, chosen

on the basis of expected price and expected yield,

given soil moisture and nutrient content, expected

weather, etc.

Connecting worldsThe CMC team is currently studying sensor

geometries to optimise the system’s cost and efficiency

parameters. The sensors, Mr Sridhar says, could be

distributed when sowing seeds or from a helicopter or

plane when crop dusting. From the initial idea stages,

the project is currently about a year old, and the team

expects to come out with prototype sensors within

six months.

Mr Venkataswamy, who previously worked with

the team at CMC and is now with TCS, underscores

the value of the two organisations collaborating on

this project. “TCS is good at developing algorithms,

and CMC is good with embedded and wireless

technology,” he says.

In the near term, harvesting recommendations

could be made based on the weather forecast and

crop-protection measures based on pest reports in

neighbouring areas. And, in a few years, the data could

be used by the government to make more-informed

decisions on how to distribute electricity, when to

release water from dams, how to fix prices, etc. It

could also help insurance companies decide the

premiums in crop-insurance schemes.

The biggest benefit of the system is that it takes

the data-gathering burden away from farmers. It frees

them to engage in other activities and be in other

places while making decisions about crop treatment.

Also, their decisions are bound to be more effective, as

they will be based on detailed and accurate data.

Additionally, the system reduces the labour load

farmers will need.

Once the system is complete and running, the

team foresees other, perhaps less critical, uses for such

technology. Wouldn’t it benefit a cricket team to know

the moisture content of the pitch when deciding

whether to pick spinners or fast bowlers? Wouldn’t

such information, communicated through a graphic,

be appreciated by the fan watching the game? Would

such technology aid the managers of, for example, golf

courses, where it can save time and other resources to

know the moisture level of a large area of land without

having to inspect it manually? A market for all these

applications definitely exists, but, for the team, the

priority is to aid Indian farmers, and the project is

being tailored to their needs. �

TATA INTERNATIONALBotanical bounty from akiller weed A unique thought process led the TataInternational R&D team to use poisonousparthenium plants to create a cheap andenvironment-friendly preservative

Don’t let the grass grow under your feet, runs the

old maxim. And when it comes to the highly

noxious parthenium weed, which has been declared a

health hazard in several states of India, the maxim

makes eminent sense.

A project targeted at controlling this toxic weed

and, while doing so, extracting an anti-microbial

agent from it has fetched the two-member team of

S Saravanabhavan and Anupama Pati from Tata

International’s R&D division the much-coveted

Leading Edge innovation award.

The duo chose to work on a critical health and

community issue that affects most of India today —

the widespread proliferation of parthenium, also

The CMC team received ‘The Leading Edge’ award from Tata MotorsGroup CEO and MD Carl-Peter Forster


known as Congress grass or Gajjar ghas — and has

come up with a unique solution that promises several

social, environmental and economic benefits.

Out in Dewas, Madhya Pradesh, where Tata

International’s leather and leather products business

unit is located, the parthenium weed has, over the

years, been growing ever stronger and getting more

entrenched. Parthenium is not native to India, but it

has spread like wildfire across large swathes of both

farm and wasteland and now covers an estimated 35

million hectares across the country.

Green toxinThere is a reason for the weed’s evil reputation:

When its seeds burst, they disperse fine pollen that

spreads in the air and causes severe respiratory

diseases in man as well as beast. Each parthenium

plant grows thousands of these pollens that, when

inhaled, clog the airways, nasal passages and lungs. It is

one of the main causes of asthma in human beings,

especially children, and cattle across India. In bovines

parthenium can cause a drastic drop in milk produced.

The plant is so poisonous it can neither be used

as animal fodder nor as biomass for fuel. When

parthenium covers the land, its roots weaken the soil

and farmers are left with depleted agricultural yields,

which can fall by as much as 35-40 per cent.

India’s Union Ministry of Environment and

Forests has allocated funds for research to eradicate

parthenium. The challenge is that even herbicides

don’t have too much of an impact on the weed, given

its ability to flower in all seasons and reproduce

rapidly. Attempts to pull the plants out by hand or to

burn them results in the seeds bursting and releasing

their dangerous pollen.

In December 2009, surveying the rapid growth

of parthenium in and around Dewas and seeing its

terrible impact on local communities, Tata

International executive director OK Kaul spoke to his

research team about the weed problem, suggesting that

if the company could come up with a solution it

would be a positive and much needed social

responsibility initiative.

Early in 2010, Mr Saravanabhavan, deputy

divisional manager of the R&D division, and Ms Pati,

a microbiologist on the team, decided to take on the

task of taming the pestilential parthenium. As the two

started to study the killer grass, they realised it was a

much tougher problem than they had bargained for.

Even collecting the weed for lab research was

hazardous. Parthenium causes not just asthma and

other lung problems, but it also leads to severe skin

infections and dermatitis. The only way to safely

handle the plant is by wearing protective clothing.

A close examination of parthenium’s characteristics

revealed that even its roots are polluting, killing

nitrogen-fixing microbes and lowering the fertility of the

soil. To make matters worse, the plant has a natural

ability to rejuvenate itself.

Managing the menaceBut Mr Saravanabhavan and Ms Pati soon came

to understand that not everything about parthenium

was negative. Mr Saravanabhavan says, “Nothing in

nature is all ‘bad’. Nature is balanced. There had to be

something about this plant that was useful.”

The answer lay, surprisingly, in the plant’s very

toxicity. An analysis of its biochemistry revealed that

parthenium contained several phytotoxins: parthenin,

ferulic acid, caffeic acid and chlorogenic acid. All of

these have one characteristic that could be used to

advantage. Given their strong anti-microbial and

anti-fungal property, they inhibit the growth of

microbes and fungus.

What Mr Saravanabhavan and Ms Pati did — and

this is where the brilliance of their idea shines through

— was devise a way to extract the

phytotoxins of the parthenium plant and

create an entirely new substance that

could act as an anti-microbial agent.

First, the parthenium was

collected, washed and dried. Then the

phytotoxic substances were extracted

through aqueous and non-aqueous

systems. These extracted compounds

were subjected to tests and their anti-

bacterial and anti-fungal activity were

analysed. The lab results proved beyond

doubt that the extract — the substance

has not yet been named, but the team

has suggested calling it Parthex — acts

as a natural preservative. The Tata International team received ‘The Leading Edge’ award from TataConsultancy Services•vice chairman S Ramadorai


The first material for the trial of Parthex as a

preservative was leather, in which Tata International

runs one of its main business lines. When used on raw

leather Parthex worked like a dream: It kept raw,

untreated leather from catching mould or parasites for

weeks. This meant that it had the potential to replace a

synthetic preservative called thiocyanomethylthio

benzothiazole (TCMTB) that is used in the leather

industry for preservation purposes.

“Parthex is much, much cheaper to produce,’’

says Mr Saravanabhavan. “TCMTB costs as much as

`400-500 a kilo, whereas we can produce Parthex

for as little as `60-80 a kilo.”

The peril tamedTata International is already working out the

logistics of producing Parthex in the quantities that it

requires for its leather business. The company has

applied for a patent for the innovation and is looking

at setting up a pilot-level plant for production.

“Parthex can be used in several other industries,

too,’’ says Ms Pati. “The target industries are

wood and wood products, paper, paint and adhesives.

Apart from the food, drug and cosmetics sectors,

we feel Parthex can be used anywhere else as an

anti-microbial preservative.’’ The preservative industry

worldwide is a multi-billion dollar market, with the

wood and paint segment (along with other user

segments that do not call for human or animal

consumption), accounting for as much as 12 per

cent in total value.

Yet the implications of this find are much

more than monetary. For one thing, Parthex is a

biodegradable and natural preservative with no

environmental load. By coming up with a strong and

valid use for parthenium, there is now a solution for

its safe disposal beyond what farmers practise. By

getting it out of the fields in large quantities, its seed

and pollen dispersal will be reduced drastically,

thus lessening its harmful effect on human

beings and animals.

The domino effect could continue further, with

Parthex primed to have a much wider socioeconomic

effect by virtue of its ability to enhance crop yields and

lower health-related costs. And, just as significant, the

new product will have a positive impact on Tata

International’s revenues.

Little wonder, then, that Parthex has won

Mr Saravanabhavan and Ms Pati an award and

recognition at the 2010 Tata Innovista programme.

If innovation can be defined as an endeavour that

brings about change, then there can be no doubt

about the prospects of Tata International’s latest

tryst with ingenuity. �

TATA TECHNOLOGIESSting in the tailgateDesigners from Tata Technologies slid into thechallenge of solving the sticky problem ofaccessing the luggage space in the Nano

The Tata Nano has been one of the revolutionary

products of our age. It has broken the price

barrier and created a new market while giving life to

the aspirations of a large segment of people in India.

This considerable feat was achieved by striking an

innovative balance between cost and features. This

balance gave rise to a number of excellent features,

such as economy, space, style and safety. But there was

one demerit that had become a cause for consumer

dissatisfaction, and it became known through

customer feedback and media reviews. The complaint

was about the difficulty of accessing the luggage

compartment in the Nano.

The small car did not have a tailgate at the rear,

on account of space constraints, since the engine is

located there. In the interests of structural stability, no

door could be provided, as is the norm in a

conventional tailgate.

The result was that passengers sitting in the rear

of the Nano had to vacate the seat for the luggage to

be accessed. The rear seat had to be unlocked and

folded forward to enable access to the limited space in

the luggage area.

After the luggage was stowed or removed, the seat

had to be pushed back and locked into position. This

made it a very inconvenient and unattractive feature.

There was also a fear that repeatedly locking and

unlocking the seat would compromise the quality

of the component.

Hurdle managementIn 2009, Shankar Nangare, project manager,

product development and validation, Tata

Technologies, and his colleagues, Ragesh Babu and

Sudheera JC, both design engineers, took the initiative

to come up with a solution to the problem. The

challenge was a big one.

Conventional solutions would not have helped. “The

solution had to fit within the `1-lakh cost formula of the

car and needed to be aligned with the features, and within

the framework, of the Nano,” says Mr Nangare.

Respecting the balance that the Nano had already

achieved was critical. There were certain factors that

had to be kept in mind. Wiper integration had to be

done properly and demisting had to be made possible.

That is when it occurred to the team that perhaps

the provision of a sliding glass door might help solve


the problem. Once the glass was made to slide, passengers

could access the luggage easily. “It would look as a normal

tailgate but be an integral part of the body,” adds

Mr Nangare. “Only the glass would slide up and down.”

While the idea was good, the team had to face a few

hurdles on the way to applying the design to the car. “We

were told that hardly 1-2 per cent of the direct material

cost could be increased,” explains Mr Nangare. “What

made it even more difficult was that it had to be made

suitable to the current architecture of the car, within

current manufacturing and engineering boundaries. Since

the car was already in production, the modification was

difficult as compared with a fresh design.”

Integration helpsTo achieve the target, the team decided to integrate

some engineering functions. “We agreed that the motor

for winding the glass and for operating the rear wiper

could be the same since both have the same

characteristics,” says Mr Babu. “This would lead to a cost

and weight reduction in the implementation of the wiper.

The reduction in the weight would also lead to better fuel

economy. The solution had the potential to satisfy the

customer while providing an added safety feature.”

The integration will enable the number of counts

to be reduced by 60 per cent in comparison with

conventional solutions. The team is in touch with

engineers and suppliers to work on the electronic field

required to achieve the integration.

The team initially worked on a prototype to see if

it would work and how much it would enhance the

functionality and the comfort of the passengers inside

the car. “We did some design feasibility studies to

build confidence in the engineering,” says Mr Nangare.

“The next step was for the manufacturing and

commercial people to take up the idea and implement

it in the Tata Nano.”

The beauty of the innovation is

that while tailgates are generally fixed

parts of the car body, this innovation

has enabled a sliding tailgate. Also,

higher-end versions of the car include a

button located on the dashboard of the

car. Pressing this button causes the

glass to slide open, enabling access to

the luggage from within and outside

the Nano.

Added benefitsLower-end versions of the vehicle

are equipped with a manual winding

lever. Winding down the handle enables

the glass to move up or down as required. To ensure

that the innovation does not take away from the

design appeal of the Nano, the team has provided for a

handle to be integrated with the outer panel. When the

lever is opened it becomes a handle, when closed, it

looks like the ‘T’ monogram, cleverly hiding the lever

within.

The innovation has yielded other benefits.

In the base version of the car, if you keep part of

the glass slightly open there will be better natural

ventilation. The bumper can be integrated with the

outer panel of the tailgate. In the case of a low-impact

situation, the seat metal damages are very costly to

repair, but plastic can take a few hits without damage.

The warranty cost can go down drastically.

The registration plate is exactly behind the rear

engine. This affects the cooling of the engine. The

team’s innovation provides for the registration plate

to be integrated on the tailgate in order to get

better cooling.

The tailgate can be accessed even in crowded

places where it would not have been possible to open a

conventional tailgate. “This,” says Mr Babu, “is a

customer comfort feature that will change the way

people look at our products. It will set a trend.”

The best attribute of this innovation is that it has

applications in other small cars, too. “The next step

that we can think of is that the whole rear end can be

assembled in a modular fashion,” says Mr Sudheera.

“This will be helpful in reducing indirect costs.”

The manufacturing division of Tata Motors has

been extremely appreciative of the innovation and is

readying to use it in the upgraded version of the Nano.

Once the issue of the luggage compartment is resolved,

it will lead to potentially higher sales of the car.

The team has applied for a much-deserved

patent for their innovation. It is now up to Nano

drivers and enthusiasts to appreciate the worth of

the team’s innovation. �

The Tata Technologies team received ‘The Leading Edge’award from Tata Motors Group CEO and MD Carl-Peter Forster

Cynthia Rodrigues, Gayatri Kamath, Matt McHugh and Philip Chacko


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