Gearing Automotive Industry with Pratap Bose(Tata Motors)
The automotive industry has witnessed numerous changes over the past few decades. Simultaneously, with the evolving customer expectations and new trends, designers are trying to create unique and emotionally inclusive experiences. But to achieve this goal, they need to overcome challenges like safety, utility, accessibility, and the impact that a product has on the user. How can designers step up to these challenges and positively impact the minds of the users?
To know more about this theme, in the 44th episode, we interact with Pratap Bose, Vice President of Global Design at Tata Motors. With over two decades of global experience across various cultures, he has developed a unique understanding of diverse business cultures. Let us know more about his journey and experiences in the latest episode of the “Avantika Designeering Series” Podcast, “Gearing Automotive Industry.”
Rohit Lalwani: For designers, design is a part of their everyday lives. These creative minds are always trying new techniques to level up their skills and experience by overcoming new challenges. The question I put forward is, how can designers come out of their comfort zone to embrace something completely different?
Pratap: Yes, it is very important. Designers do step out of their comfort zone not only in the creative side, which happens as a natural part of the process but very important to understand where one fits in a larger scheme of things in a business. Design is a business and it is very important to understand that. Unfortunately, through our design education and even early parts of design practice, you do not realize how important that is. For instance, I took many management courses. I have been lucky in the company that allowed us to do that.
In finance, in marketing, in strategy, etc so, various parts of the business are as important to understand, because if you do not understand those levers, it becomes very hard for you to contribute to the growth and success of a company or your organization.
I would like to give a piece of advice to the young as well the old designers that you should start understanding the other parts of the business. HR, for instance, how does that impact your final outcome? I mentioned finance, who pays for design within a company, how does design earn its keep in a large organization? These are some important points that we should know. This got me out of my comfort zone because, when you are doing a course on finance or you are doing a course on marketing or HR, you are exposed and it is very important to be in that situation. My company and I made sure that throughout my career, I had exposure to other management and other business disciplines and that has been very important for me.
Rohit Lalwani: Building a product from scratch is a very complex process with many threats. As you quote from sheet of paper to sheet of steel, we would love to know your roadmap for developing a product that optimizes the production process and it would be great if you could just give our listeners a glimpse and help them visualize how this happens?
Pratap: Whatever products we design in a studio has to be manufactured and sold and created. We do not sell a pretty picture. We sell a physical product that someone has to touch, feel the drive, seating, etc. There are lots of considerations and there is technical complexity. A car is in itself, if you look at just the dashboard, the number of elements that you need to integrate into just a dashboard headlight, Taillight, these are products in themselves. These are specializations in themselves. They are so technically complex from legal manufacturing, optics, etc. If you look at just a headlamp today, it is a product design exercise in itself.
A car brings together a lot of these diverse disciplines. If you look at materials in a car there is sheet metal, but there are probably twenty-thirty different types of plastics, that are made by different suppliers and they all come together in the car. The way you specify paint on a plastic bumper, and the way you specify paint on a sheet metal part is completely different because the process of applying it is different. When a bumper comes together on a car, it has to be the same colour as the rest of the car.
Do you remember those horrific days in the nineties where you would see a huge difference of colour between a bumper and the rest of the car? These are some of the complexities and do not forget all of this is also a very expensive process. A new car development can cost anywhere between seven-hundred to eleven-hundred crores. You can imagine how much is riding on the design of a car, how many jobs are dependent on it. That is a huge responsibility as well for a designer to shoulder because if it goes wrong, the consequence could be pretty alarming. For instance, in terms of people’s livelihoods, the car industry and the stakes are very high, so you have to operate therefore in this sort of complex environment, legislation, competition, the investment involved, and then the purely technical aspects of it. So many materials and processes come together in a car. I do not think there is a single industrial process that is not in a car.
Being a good designer is much beyond being able to draw on a piece of paper.
It is about being able to take these diverse opposing forces that go into a car development and then try to find the right balance to put into a car. There are lots of discussions that we have on a daily basis as a company. How do you find that balance is very important as a designer, you have to understand where to make the right trade-offs. When you make the right trade-offs as a company and as a design team, that is when you come up with one of these great products, any great product is an outcome of the right trade-offs that a company has taken internally. It is like a balanced meal. You cannot have too much sugar, or you cannot have too much salt, you cannot have too much chilli. It is always when the balance is right, is when you get the right taste or outcome.
Rohit Lalwani: Coming to our last question at Avantika University, we have coined the term ‘Designeering’ which is our philosophy. It is the blended approach of design and engineering. Do you think both these fields merge and do this philosophy make sense in terms of training the next generation of techies and designers?
Pratap: Yes, for me, it would be like design, engineering, finance, marketing, HR, a complete designer is someone who understands the other ramifications of the business functions. Designeering is a good place to start because design and engineering are so intrinsically linked in our development process. We have daily interactions with our engineering colleagues. They are the ones who have to convert our dream into reality. We give them a clay model or some digital data, and they are the ones who have to ensure whether it is stampable, or pressable, or moldable, formable, affordable. They are the ones who do the heavy lifting. Having empathy is a part of a designer’s character, if you can empathize where that engineer is coming from, then there is a way of reducing conflict and the same has to be with the engineer. They also should understand where a designer’s point of view comes from. If Avantika has this sort of hybrid, that approach is very important.
Stepping into someone else’s shoes is fundamental in creating great partnerships.
I can tell you myself, about the seven or eight cars that I have worked on in the past, the best outcome has been where the design team and the engineering team have had this common goal of delivering the best product for the customer. The more design and engineering appreciate and understand each other, the more of this would happen. Therefore, this is a great initiative!
Mr Pratap further talks more about the domains of Design and technology. To further listen to his inspiring and motivational words, head to our latest Podcast episode. For more details, visit our profile.
