Profile:

Dr. Kaushik Sahu believes in design thinking. He was inducted into this thought process while doing his doctoral research in the late 1980s. He completed his doctoral research in 1991 with a major in Design and a minor in Manufacturing from the Mechanical and Industrial Engineering department of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst (USA). His current interest is in democratizing design for all round development through active participation of the stakeholders. He has recently directed research for studying the design deficit in Indian firms that adversely affects manufacturing performance. This research is driven by the intriguing question: Why soft technology is so hard to absorb?

Dr. Sahu is tracking the efforts being made at the national level to evolve a national design policy that would foster creativity in professional higher education. He articulates the need for including cross-disciplinary design courses in the early stages of professional higher education in order to de-emphasize compartmentalized learning. He believes that technology provides the solution to foster concurrency and hence there is a huge potential to make computer-aided design tools more ubiquitous. While promoting design thinking in higher education, he is also endeavoring to establish a Multi-disciplinary Design Institute in Orissa. It would be really rewarding to all the stakeholders when they see a poor state deriving the maximum benefits by putting "design" upfront (as envisaged in the draft National Design Policy) while solving its various socio-economic problems.

Dr. Sahu has spent large part of his career experiencing and studying policy changes as viewed from the private education sector in post-liberalized India. Most private education providers in India focus primarily on teaching. Securing funds for doing research, therefore, has been a rather challenging task. Even extra-mural government funds remain largely limited to government-aided colleges. Despite the odds, he could secure funds from AICTE to establish one Computer-aided Product and Process Development (CAPPD) Laboratory meant for fostering concurrent product and process development initiatives at XIM Bhubaneswar. Here is a summary of the impact assessment study. Dr. Sahu was also instrumental in facilitating a grant from the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR) to setup a Center for Manufacturing and Technology Management at XIM Bhubaneswar prior to joining KIIT. He is now promoting activities around a "virtual" Center for Manufacturing and Technology Management (CMTM). He has also facilitated the establishment of a Center for Building Competence in Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) at KIIT University and is developing the curriculum for strengthening ties with the industry.

As a disciple of the design theory and methodology group, he likes to adopt the design-for-X methodology in most of his teaching and research related activities. He encourages students to develop multiple viewpoint perspectives in any problem-solving endeavor. He advises research-oriented students to develop and adopt intelligent design tools that would go a long way in reducing the transaction burden on engineers, managers and other downstream users. He believes that engineers should be allowed to "engineer creative solutions" with the help of intelligent design tools. His own research work involves developing intelligent design capabilities for guiding the designer in the concept design stage. He has put in several years of teaching and research experience since 1986. He has also imparted training to executives in small, medium and large enterprises and prefers to develop customized training kits for enabling companies to develop their own in-house training capabilities.

His doctoral research highlights the importance of having a seamless integration between design and analysis modules. He co-authored a paper that received the best paper award in the area of Artificial Intelligence, Expert Systems and Knowledge-Based Systems at the 1990 International Computers in Engineering Conference organized by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) at Boston, USA. He is currently working in the area of Design for Supply Chains which is an extension of his earlier interests in the areas of Computer Aided Design and Engineering (CAD/CAE), Knowledge-Based Systems in Design and Manufacturing, Design Automation, Concurrent Engineering, Manufacturing Automation Management and Total Quality Management. This area of research provides interesting application oriented avenues in product development with the help of concepts, such as, design for logistics and design for environment that enable delayed differentiation. Doctoral candidates may follow these links (CBCPLM, IPPD and SCM) to find more about the available areas of research. [Click here for Dr Sahu's Area of Interest]

Dr. Sahu has been closely associated with the professional education environment of the Indian state of Orissa - both as a student and then as a teacher. He has supported initiatives in upcoming Engineering and Management schools by participating in various institution-building exercises. Before joining KIIT University, he participated in various academic initiatives at XIM Bhubaneswar, NIT Rourkela and CET Bhubaneswar. He supported the College of Engineering and Technology (CET) during its formative years in the mid-eighties. After obtaining his doctoral degree he returned to India and taught Industrial Management to undergraduate students at the National Institute of Technology (NIT), Rourkela. Subsequently he moved on to support Xavier Institute of Management (XIM) during its growth stages. There he taught courses in Production Management to Post-graduate and Executive-participants. His domain of teaching interest evolved over the years from teaching department-specific courses in Machine Design, Mechanical Vibration and Control Systems Engineering to cross-discipline courses in Production and Operations Management, Total Quality Management and Supply Chain Management. Some of his recent courses are Product Design & Development, Product Lifecycle Management, Digital Manufacturing and Virtual Factory, Production and Operations Management, Total Quality Management, Supply Chain Management, and Computer Integrated Manufacturing. He has supervised projects in Modern Manufacturing Management Systems and Business Process Reengineering. He prefers offering web-enhanced courses and likes to track the progress of course-related projects online. He has developed some new courses to help bridge the gap between technology and management. Integrated Product and Process Design, Design for Quality and Design in Business are some of the new courses that will be offered by him.

Dr. Sahu likes to draw cartoons and computer-aided theme sketches where he has introduced the character known as "kaustic". Some of his themes are quite animated.

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