Mitsubishi Electric Cup : The perfect platform technology innovation

Mr. Rameshchandra Bhorania (AGM –FAC & Program Chair for MECUP)

The race for one of India’s most awaited automation competitions for engineering students is now heating up. The grand finale of the second edition of the Mitsubishi Electric Cup (ME Cup) — Mitsubishi Electric India’s national-level automation competition for students – is all set to held in February next year at College of Engineering Pune.

In its second edition, the ME Cup has aced its last year’s version by providing state-of-the art training to the participating teams that has helped them hone their technical skills. This year, the total number of participating teams touched a whopping 95, of which 35 have been shortlisted for the final competition.

The theme for this year’s ME Cup –in tandem with the environment statement of Mitsubishi Electric –has been kept ‘Intelligent manufacturing for a greener tomorrow’ under which students have been asked to independently design and produce a complete set of devices / models by using Mitsubishi Electric factory automation products, the control system of which shall be built up based on e&eco-F@ctory concepts.

The top 35 teams have to prepare working models of various industrial manufacturing processes, energy saving solutions and smart solutions for building automation for the finale round.

What made the process more interesting was the fact that Mitsubishi Electric India decided to seamlessly weave together the competitive spirit among the students and the pre-requisite practical assistance that they needed. Technical members from Mitsubishi Electric India organised sessions for the participating teams to provide technical support and training with the FA Products namely PLC, HMI, VFD and Servo Systems to make the models.

The system worked in an organised manner. While the teams became busy gearing up for the grand finale, the ME Cup squad started distributing the FA products to them. This was followed by the assigning of technical mentors from Mitsubishi Electric India to the teams who would provide complete technical guidance throughout the development phase along with appropriate training related to the FA products.

The participants are elated at having received professional training from expert mentors. Said Prashant Parsure, Team Brain-on-Crane, IIT Kharagpur, “This was one of the best workshops I have ever attended. The materials and facilitation were excellent. I recommend this training to all who want to pursue a career in Automation Domain.”

Radhika Nibandhe, Team Cummins Cybele, MKSSS Cummins College of Engineering For Women, Pune appreciated the team spirit that the session generated. “Interacting with other teams and participants was amazing and I learned a lot from their visions and insights. The subject-matter is timely, relevant and presentable.  This is an important way of looking towards the field of Automation,” she said.

The ME Cup aims at improving the ability of college students for engineering application, arousing their interests in learning engineering technology, building up an innovation capacity and developing cooperation spirit in them. Keeping in tune with this, the training sessions aimed at embodying the ‘learning for practice’ ideology, reviewing students’ actual manufacturing and commissioning abilities and enhancing exchange and cooperation between university and enterprise.

Dilpreet Singh, Team “The Innovators”, ISTC, Chandigarh too was all praise for the session. “The Mitsubishi Electric India representatives had remarkable training skills. They always took our answers seriously, never dismissed them as wrong, emphasized good answers and provided useful examples. We are grateful to them,” he said.

The mentors meanwhile expressed happiness over the participants’ pro-activeness. Ripanjeet Kaur, Mentor ME Cup 2017, FAC-Gurgaon, said, “Although the participants were all budding engineers, their maturity and grasping of the Automation domain was at par with seasoned engineers. I enjoyed the training session to make them ready for MECUP.” Agreed K. Pradeep, Mentor ME Cup 2017, FAC-Bangalore. “They all had an excellent understanding and focus on the theme of the competition. The level of competition will take a new high this time,” he said. Shrikant Takale, Mentor ME Cup 2017, FAC-Pune said that the students focus on a ‘Greener tomorrow’ was really encouraging.