Below notes jotted down during the 2nd workshop of a 3-workshop series with Dr. Anil Gupta.
“Ideation Strategy for Creative Innovation”
Date: 20th December 2016
Venue: Hall A-2, Second Floor, GTU, Chandkheda
Chief Mentor: Prof. Anil K. Gupta
I started the trip by around 6.15 am from my home, Surat. I Reached late due to traffic on the highway, especially delay at the Miyagam Toll Plaza, which I could cross by 9.00 am. By around 11.30am, I reached to the venue and joined the workshop.
Dr. Rajul Gajjar, Dr. Anil Gupta and Prof. Karmjit Bihola were discussing with participants from the stage of A-2 Hall, it I presume to be Session-I of the day.
Below is the text picked up as notes during the talks.
Session I (11.45 am onward)
Discussion on problems fetched by participants
Check below for railways website for 4 challenges
The following five challenges are aimed at promoting innovation in our country by focusing on specific problems being faced by Indian Railways:
- Innovation Challenge for ‘Design of Wagons for efficient loading and transportation of new commodities’.
- Innovation Challenge for ‘Easy Accessibility to Trains from Low Level Platforms’.
- Innovation Challenge for ‘New Idea/ Suggestion to improve the working of Indian Railways’.
- Innovation Challenge for ‘Increasing Passenger Carrying Capacity of Coaches of Indian Railways’.
- Innovation Challenge for Developing New Digital Capabilities at the Stations of Indian Railways’.
Six awards will be given to the finalists of each Innovation Challenge as per details given below:
First Award : 06 lakhs (Maximum) Second Award : 03 Lakhs (Maximum) Third Award : 02 Lakhs (Maximum) Three Consolation Prizes (Maximum) : 01 Lakh each (Maximum) Source: http://pib.nic.in/newsite/PrintRelease.aspx?relid=155587
Teams from mechanical and E&C can collaborate for problems related to traffic.
“Product – Process – System – Services” must be checked for any idea.
Best solutions need not be very much expensive, but it can be simpler and cheap. The most important point is that the solution should be able to address the problem in consideration.
Levels of learning from innovation
- Artefactual – similar type of design
- Analogic – same idea (citation way) reference of some idea; go ahead from someone’s past effort
- (idea of small airline door which is converted into steps)
- As a metaphor, it can be used as the conditions are different – plane to train
- Goal: Helping people to climb train quickly – solution can be anywhere.
- Minimum expenditure to be considered
- Platform smoothness should not be affected; it should be set within the surface
- Idea replication from manhole cover – smooth surface, walkable, shift-able
- Steps or ramp?
- If slope, height of coolie and entry door will become a challenge
- Allow conditions that students can learn, by putting challenges among them
- Heuristic “is any approach to problem-solving, learning, or discovery that employs a practical method not guaranteed to be optimal or perfect, but sufficient for the immediate goals.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heuristic)
- Gestalt “is a philosophy of mind of the Berlin School of experimental psychology. Gestalt psychology is an attempt to understand the laws behind the ability to acquire and maintain meaningful perceptions in an apparently chaotic world.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestalt_psychology)
Session II (12.43 pm onward)
Announcement to find Sattvik on Facebook – appeal for a volunteer to manage the cashless services (about 40 persons required) www.Bit.ly/CFVSATTVIK16
DO THE MAXIMUM IN CRITICIZING AN IDEA
“In the war, attack the enemy at the weakest and in the intellectual debate, we attack the strongest point”
Desalination project: Silver Oak College, Ahmedabad (Prof. Vidhi Bhavsar)
- A visit at Kutch in past
- Saw and observed activities of an Agaria
- Planning to prepare a tool that can collect the evaporated water
- Discussion over the empathy of the project and the progress of students that they have made.
- The idea is to collect by making a box with glass/transparent surface at top in a defined slope which shall be allowing flow of evaporated drops to be condensed and flow towards end where a pipe will collect this water and transfer to a larger storage space
- Mechanism of due harvesting can be helpful
Manu Yadav, SVP College, Mehsana
Manu Yadav explaining “Cycle based compressor for cooling” at GTU workshop on empathetic design in collaboration with Honey Bee Network
- Traveling village labor by cycle with tiffin box and other stuff during a day
- Created an attachment on the backside career
- A compressor working using the paddle power
- At present cost is about 1500-2000
- The product is not working with some difficulties
- Website of techpedia ß Explore
- Pelting tires can be useful
- The video was live on FB – available at:
- Open invitation to have more than 100 application with the product idea
- manuyadav008@gmail.com
- Reduce the transition of cycle (check @14 min step of video)
- It can be most useful to carry medicines in remote areas
SHARE YOUR IDEAS – STRATEGY: CROWDSOURCING OF IDEAS
Help in making acknowledge network – improved efficient output
Send the project abstracts (ideas) to Techpedia with email id
Share ideas and challenges (in the form of a feedback)
Focus on ideas one-by- one: do not address all at a time: move step by step
Collect problems of local area
Make a list of it
Bring it under crowd
Monika, B. H. Gardi College of Engineering & Technology, Rajkot
- A joint effort of Civil, EC and Mechanical students’ team
- Hostel based problem for addressing bathroom used water recycling
- LIVE on FB (Check out the comments section)
- Defined the problem
- Made a review
- Studied treatment plant with 3 chambers
- Water treatment for the used water
- Working model is prepared using different components
- Costing is about 1.15 Lakh
- 10000 liters per day capacity
- mrshah@gardividyapith.ac.in
- Benchmarking is critical to any work
- Where do we stand across the globe – compare globally
- It will help in generating scope for improvement
- Sample results after testing is showing hope for potable water recovery from wastewater
- Atomize the water while usage hence generation of wastewater can be reduced
- Can we use sunlight or another type of optimization?
- What is the life of chambers?
- What is the cost of replacement and maintenance?
Session III (Post lunch)
CASE DISCUSSION
Prof. Divyang, Vasad Engineering College
- Presentation on reduction of electricity bill for consumption of AC
- Discussed residual power demand in Delhi
- Observation on as a person 6-8 hours (33% of a day) is sleeping
- Installation should be easy
- Design an attachment in dual mode – allowing the use of AC whenever needed, after installation, only the area around the bed should be cooled
- Auto cut-off mechanism is required for tripping the AC whenever the cooling is not required
- The flow of fresh air vs. recycled cooling air for an average person’s need to be worked out
LIVE ON FB: Brainstorming on the idea:
- Heat exchanger to be used to convert heated body cloths to provide cooling
- Hot air goes up, why to install air at the top? It increases the workload on the AC machine.
- AC should be at the bottom part of the room
- How the air move inside the chamber? Start analysis from this point.
- Assume, outside temperature is more than inside – true for summer, false for winter
- 42 degree to 32 degree takes more of energy
- Water heater should have drawing of the water from top, no requirement for heated water column inside heater – faulty design – need to change the outlet of the hot water in design of the heater
- Understand the nature of flow of the energy, map it, define where the least of the Work will be needed
- Commitment should be to the problem, not to the solution. Avoid bias. Do not stick to a solution too early – check other possibilities
- Define the boundary conditions, think which can be changed, start turning it one-by-one, not all to be changed at a time;
- Give more time in identifying a problem
- Return air movement
- Temperature in the night do not remain constant when cooled air is available outside, just bring it inside as there is no need for condense the air for cooling
- Change the speed of the fan by taking feedback from the room temperature (designed in Darjiling), switch is auto reset; similar mechanism is required in a fan regulator (entire of fan industry has ignored it so far)
- Design a switch with a regulator the reboots using a feedback
- Need a sensor near bed with temperature measurement
- All the detailing needs to be addressed
- Simpler solutions are possible, not engineering is always required to have complexity
- Cooling
- Changing the AC system so that it cools limited area in a manner that it uses temperature variations
- Divide the problem into phases, do not address all the parts at a time
Discussion on preventing people from driving vehicle without license
Prof. Dipali Kasat, Prof. Purvi Rekh and Prof. Bhasker V. Bhatt from Sarvajanik College of Engineering & Technology, Surat. Below is a glimpse of the talk recorded by Prof. Bhasker.
https://youtu.be/yXNvilzBFrI
- Done the prior art search – compliments
- Good project it was linking unmet needs, comprehensive abstraction of the project
- http://nif.org.in/ and ignite website
- Search “preventing people from driving without license.”
- Ravi Ranjan from Patna, Bihar
- Give credit to his work and move ahead
- Many solutions in tracking a vehicle
- Identify a key feature of the problem, find a solution for a component level
- The children in the villages are also thinking what engineers are thinking, chase the answers first and help to achieve the dreams of these kids (need to have seeds for innovators – proven competitors)
Announcement by the end of the day
February 25th there will be an exhibition of the products developed in these two phases. The announcement will be made in advances. Investors invitation and broadcasting will be done.
Communicate at info@nif.org and show willingness for working on projects of nif, for which the NIF will invest to motivate the grass root innovators. It is an incubator working at Ahmedabad.
I had described the day as a summarization in the form of a feedback of discussions held using these notes. The moment was photographed by a friend at GTU who was capturing the moments.
All are advised to communicate to GIAN and visit www.gyan.org for innovation related to grassroots innovation. E-mail announced were gian@gyan.org / anamika@gian.org.
GIAN is helping unaided, unqualified, untrained individual innovator from the informal sector who has conceptualized/developed technological innovation and/or outstanding traditional knowledge practices. (Source: http://www.gian.org/)
The day went to an end after discussions by Prof. Karmjit and Prof. Upadhyay of GTU. The targets for further course of actions were allocated as:
Task Plan till next Phase 3:
(Details of format will be shared soon)
Task 1: Refinement of the problem statement based on today’s workshop learning and feedback from an expert (Phase 2) – Deadline: 1st January 2017.
Task 2: Case Studies for one success story and one failure story of completed projects – Deadline: 1st February 2017.
Task 3: Proof of Concept/Prototype (As sir asked, we will need to submit decent working prototype to showcase to the industry, government, design experts and community people) – Deadline before phase 3 (the probable date: 25/02/2017).
Task 3.1: Complete individual learning report/document of entire workshop series for further implementation (AVOID copy-pasting)
Ideation Strategy for Creative Innovation by Bhasker Vijaykumar Bhatt is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.