This article is part 4 of the series on my 25 years of railway journey and will convey the details about one of the best companies to work for in the world, General Electric.
During May 2006, I joined General Electric Transportation Systems (GETS) in Bangalore, India to work on Indian Railways (IR) projects. GETS entered the Indian Railway market newly and in the process of providing their Electronic Interlocking (EI) product and Multi Section Digital Axle Counter (MSDAC) solutions on the Indian Railways. I worked in John F Welch Technology Center (JFWTC) which is GE’s first and largest integrated, multidisciplinary research and development center outside the US. The center is named after former CEO of GE John Welch (who transformed GE and longest serving CEO of GE who passed away in March this year). I still remember the induction day where I was one among the many new engineers (mostly fresh graduates) from reputed educational institutes like Indian Institute of Technology (IIT).
It was for the first time that I worked on ‘Design’ of Electronic Interlocking system using AutoCAD. For the first 6 months, I worked on 6 new stations of East Central Railway where GE installed EI system. From circuit plans, control tables design to vital/non-vital application logic preparation it was an amazing experience.
During January 2007, I was asked to work on MSDAC project in South Western Railway. The main reason being the MSDAC system was giving problems during commissioning stage of relay interlocking system. I was completely new to the product and there were certain issues related to project management at that time. The customer (IR) was not happy as the commissioning was delayed. After working for two days, I could able to restore the system and the commissioning was done. There were certain product related issues for the wayside equipment and I provided my feedback to GETS, Italy team who own the product. They did not agree with me initially, but after lab testing was done on the defective wayside equipment that we sent them, they finally accepted that there were internal manufacturing problems.
The project consists of 4 stations on freight only line from Hospet Junction to Yashwantpur on ghat section and intended for iron ore shipment. There were many challenges in going to work sites due to difficult terrain. I still remember ADP 2 (Axle Detection Point) intermittent trouble at TB Dam station which existed even after commissioning and issues related to Trolley Suppression algorithm. One of the constraints is that product has very precise measurements for installation of wayside equipment which are difficult to achieve at certain locations. For the rest of the year 2007, I successfully commissioned all 4 stations MSDAC installation, testing and commissioning activities and handed over to the customer. But I was not fully satisfied with my job as there were still some issues with the product.
It was a great experience to work with GE. It was second stop in my journey and with the smallest ‘dwell time’ of 18 months in my career so far. I had the opportunity of working with great teams based in India/US/Italy and learnt a lot from them. I had my first experience working on embedded systems with lots of hardware, firmware and software which are key components of modern Signalling technologies. From ‘maintaining’ an existing railway signalling system in Indian Railways, I moved to Design, Installation, Testing and Commissioning and Handing Over to customer aspects and gained valuable experience.
Let me summarise takeaways from my experience with GE:
- Your success and job satisfaction does not depend only on your work, but on the product and a lot of other factors.
- Proper project management and skilled people are key to success during new product introduction.
- Meticulous planning, monitoring and control are key to execution of projects.
- High precision with strict installation constraints sometimes won’t work especially when the product is introduced in a new environment.
- Lot of care and study is required when a new product is introduced and customised for a new country and new environment.
- The two books ‘Winning’ and ‘Straight from the Gut’ written by Jack Welch are one of the best reads for me and the content of which is still relevant.
Due to my personal priorities, I decided to move to Hyderabad from Bangalore and started my next phase in career in January 2008.
Today is celebrated as ‘Teachers Day’ in India and I salute all my teachers that includes my father who was one of my teachers.