We had another amazing Family Picnic in Detroit! The event was held at Kensington Park on 19th June 2016. Amidst the fun and frolic during the memorable day, there was a delicious spread of food including the Barbecue corn on the cob and the juicy chicken and the masala vada, pavbhaji, mango lassi, biryani … and the list goes on. It was an amazing feast all day long.

An event management company was hired for organizing games and other activities for the kids & adults. All of them enjoyed the variety of games organized during the day.

Even though it was father’s day, the men had to take the responsibility to do all the cooking and cleaning. Our CEO and few of the Sr Management team represented Satven India for the picnic!

The SAE 2016 World Congress assembled the best talent in the automotive industry for the global event held during 12th ~ 14th April 2016 at Cobo Hall in Detroit. Experts, management teams, engineers and executives alike gathered to collaborate and address current challenges, sought new windows for discovery and exploration and promote the multitude of opportunities fundamental for a successful future. This year’s theme – Powering Possibilities, represented a world of untapped discoveries in the automotive industry.

Once again Satven had a prominent presence in the 2016 SAE World Congress and also set up a booth to exhibit the engineering capabilities to the automotive world. This exclusive opportunity to exhibit was limited to companies who accept the “Innovators Only” challenge and have proven to be top industry innovators and solution providers.

Several of our employees attended different training and education sessions offered by SAE. Our executives attended World Congress Annual Banquet on 14thApril.

The main speakers for the event were Takeshi Uchiyamada San, Chairman of the Board, Toyota Motor Corporation and Mr. Paul W. Smith, host of “The Paul W. Smith Show” on News Talk 760, WJR Radio, Detroit.

Sridhar Lakshminarayanan, VP & Global Delivery Head – Simulation, delivered the Keynote address at the Dassault organised SIMULIA Seminar titled “Simulation Powers Innovation”, held in Taj Vivanta, Hyderabad, on June 03 2016. Sridhar’s talk was titled “Transformation of CAE from an Uninvited Guest to an Innovation Partner”. He dwelt on how simulation has become the vanguard for product innovations & how it is driving new product development processes in virtually every industry.

Some examples of ‘Simulation Driving Innovation’ cited by Sridhar: Advancements in small overlap frontal crash, development of tweels (portmanteau of Tire & Wheel), usage of multi-physics to design HEV battery packs, light-weighting breakthrough in a pickup truck by a leading OEM, and the design of the crush can cross-section for this same vehicle.

This keynote address was well appreciated by the SIMULIA team and the dignitaries present.

The talk by Sridhar also dovetailed well with the speech delivered by the SIMULIA Brand Director immediately after his address.

Satven exhibited at the Global Automotive Components & Supplier Expo (GACS), at Stuttgart exhibition center in Germany during 31st May – 2nd June 2016. Our BDMs in Germany along with the offshore project managers & corporate communications team contributed to make this event worth an experience.

This event exclusively focused on the automotive interior suppliers and offered a platform to attract visitors from Auto OEMs and major Tier-I suppliers to explore the state of the art technologies and to connect with new vendors offering better solutions.

Among the several visitors to Satven booth were teams from Italian supplier, Auto Certification Institute, Czech & German based Engineering services companies.

Satven was an active participant in the India Automotive Forum held at the Le Meridien Hotel in Delhi towards the end of July 2016. This forum brought together several industry leaders & experts from India & abroad representing top automotive companies, technology solution providers, consultants, Government & Regulatory agencies and other key stake holders to share valuable insights and global best practices.

The theme of the forum, which was organized by Messe Frankfurt, was “Transforming from “Build-to-Print” to “Build-to-Intent”.

Sridhar Lakshminarayanan, VP & Global Delivery Head – Simulation, captivated the august audience with his talk on how virtual simulation is powering innovation in the automotive industry. Examples of several design concepts that are first studied in the virtual world were cited with explanations on how automotive OEMs and Tier-1 suppliers saved time & money in developing new products such as trucks with all-aluminum bodies, airbags that deploy from the roof and the rear of the front seat, tires that recharge batteries during braking and a few more.

Balasubramanyam J, Project Manager – Design, enthralled the dignitaries with his presentation on competitive benchmarking. The section on virtual benchmarking was especially appreciated by the delegates.

Sridhar was also part of a thought-provoking panel discussion on “Innovation in an automotive company”. His comments on customer discovery, how to bring about innovation culture in an organization by empowering the rank & file and balancing culture cohesion & creative dissent were all attention-grabbing. He also advised organizations to always set aside some time to think about strategies for the future even while focusing on improving operational excellence.

How the Ford Mustang was created was cited as a glowing example of how innovation came about based on people’s “lifestyle” and not “income groups”. Much emphasis was laid by Sridhar on how it is not going to be “business as usual” and why companies must continuously innovate to stay relevant in the marketplace.

Satven organized a new two day event on 8th and 9th June 2016, inviting the children and relatives of our associates to visit Satven facility for their knowledge enhancement. Sixteen children starting from grade-9 till engineering, participated in the event with high enthusiasm.

The purpose of this program was to provide the blooming young generation, an exposure to corporate life and make them future ready. The two day curriculum was customized very meticulously by the team to edify the young regarding how does a corporate entity strive and survives in the competitive world.

Children were educated with product development, project management and intricacies of designing in automobile industry. Children were shown the innovation centre of Satven and the associates guided and explained the children about teardown, benchmarking and reverse engineering done in the innovation lab.

This event was followed by many fun games and quiz competition. The two day program ended with prize distribution and interaction with senior members of management over refreshments.

It was indeed a memorable Children’s Day-Out @ Satven.

Satven participated in the 8th edition of CII – Automotive R&D Trends Conference held on 7 March 2016 at Chennai. Global Auto Industry Thought Leaders come together to discuss and debate various issues like the auto regulations, the industry R&D approach and the synergistic effort needed to meet the regulatory milestones.

The theme of the conference this year was “Strategizing R&D: Meeting the Regulatory Challenges”.

Satven stall had generated great curiosity among the industry professionals. Several of them had visited the stall and inquired about Satven capabilities and service offerings to the automotive world.

Satven Japan participated and setup an exhibition booth in the 8th edition of Automotive World 2016 Conference, during 13th-15th January 2016 at Tokyo, Japan. This event was Asia’s largest exhibition for automotive technologies and was themed around 5 specialized areas – Automotive Electronics, EV/HEV/FCV Technology, Lightweight Technology, Components Processing Technology and Technology for Connected Cars.

This global event brought together designers and design automation users, researchers and vendors, as well as specialists in the hardware and software design, test and manufacturing of electronic circuits and systems.

Satven co-sponsored the Automotive Megatrends conference which was held in Pune on the 2nd & 3rd of December 2015 at Hyatt Regency. It was a 2-day conference covering three different tracks – powertrain, connected vehicles and light weighting and allied manufacturing, related to passenger cars and commercial vehicles. It was attended by a number of key personalities from various OEMs & their suppliers from commercial vehicles and passenger car segments of the industry. The proceedings at the summit demonstrated the latest technological advances that are taking place in the industry.

Two of our seniors  – Janardhan T, CAE Senior Project Manager and Sridhar Lakshminarayanan, Global Delivery Head – CAE, had the opportunity to present some light-weighting related concepts & trends in the passenger car and truck segments (two different sessions held on different days).

Both the presentations were well received by the participants. The titles of the presentations were:

• Janardhan: Automotive light-weighting – 3G optimization
• Sridhar: Automotive light-weighting – A heavy weight challenge
There were several other interesting presentations by automotive industry stalwarts during the 2 day event.

Satven is well positioned to start contributing in a big way to the industry’s light weighting initiative.