Mechanical Engineering: The Start
I graduated as a Mechanical Engineer. During my college days, I was more interested in innovation and quality than just completing the curriculum. I presented a few papers and took part in technical projects.
One project that I still remember was "Design of Compression Braking for Trains." Interestingly, a similar concept was implemented in Indian Railways around 2023. There is no connection between our college project and that implementation, but it was still nice to see a concept that we had discussed many years ago being used in the real world.
At that time, our plan was quite clear. After completing Mechanical Engineering, we wanted to build our careers in manufacturing.
Things turned out differently.
Industrial Engineering: Garment Manufacturing
I spent the first 1.5 years of my career as an Industrial Engineer in the garment manufacturing industry.
That was my first real experience of working in an organization and, more importantly, my first experience of being close to a production floor.
I was exposed to manufacturing processes, production operations, productivity, work measurement, production flow and the day to day realities of running a factory.
It taught me something that stayed with me: a process that looks good on paper can behave very differently on the shop floor.
People, process and output are all connected. Improving one without understanding the others does not always improve the overall result.
At that time, I had no idea that this experience would become relevant many years later when I started working on manufacturing digital transformation.
I simply enjoyed understanding how a factory works.
Software Engineering
After those first 1.5 years in manufacturing, I moved into software engineering.
The environment changed completely, from garments, machines and production lines to code, applications, systems and protocols.
But the way I approached problems did not change much. I was still trying to understand how a system works and where it could be improved.
The early years in software were about learning the fundamentals: software development, application design, system integration, databases, problem solving and technology.
I worked on applications that had to interact with other systems and deal with real world constraints. Over time, I became more interested in how different parts of a system fit together rather than just the individual pieces of code.
Looking back, I think the transition from manufacturing to software helped me in ways I did not understand at the time.
Both are systems.
And both can look very different on a drawing or specification from how they actually behave in the real world.
ZOHO
Zoho was a long and important chapter in my career.
I spent 15 years at Zoho, working across engineering and product in an environment where software products were being built and used by a large number of customers.
That experience shaped a lot of how I think about software.
I learned about product development, engineering, large scale software integration, technology decisions and eventually technology leadership.
One of the things you learn when working on products that customers already depend on is that changing software is not the same as building something from scratch.
You have existing customers. Existing data. Existing integrations. Existing expectations.
A migration cannot simply stop the service because the new architecture is ready. An identity system has to continue working while you change what is underneath it. Teams have to coordinate while the product continues to evolve.
Those experiences changed the way I look at architecture.
Architecture is not just a diagram. It is a collection of decisions that people have to live with for years.
Entrepreneurship
After spending a long time in a large product organization, starting a company changed the questions completely.
When you build your own company, product development, customers, engineering, business and technology decisions are no longer separate subjects.
They all come together.
A technology decision is also a cost decision. A product decision is also a customer decision. An architecture decision is something you may have to support for many years.
I learned that technology choices look different when you have to explain them to a customer, support them after they go live and keep improving them with limited resources.
Entrepreneurship did not take me away from engineering.
It made engineering more accountable.
Bevywise
Bevywise is the next major chapter of my journey.
Through Bevywise, I have spent years working around Industrial IoT, MQTT, connected systems, industrial software, manufacturing technology and product engineering.
Our work started around connecting machines and devices and making industrial data useful. Over time, this took us deeper into the edge and into the communication layer between machines, devices and applications.
We worked with MQTT and other industrial and edge protocols, built gateways and explored how different types of machines and industrial equipment could be connected to software systems. This also took us into hardware, where we started working on edge devices that could collect data from machines and communicate with applications and cloud or on premise systems.
That experience taught me that industrial connectivity is rarely just about one protocol. A real factory can have different machines, controllers, sensors and systems, each with its own way of communicating.
Making all of them work together reliably is a very different problem from simply demonstrating a protocol.
Manufacturing Software
Our work at Bevywise also took us deeper into manufacturing applications.
One area that became particularly interesting was the garment industry. Given my own early experience in garment manufacturing, it was interesting to come back to the same industry many years later, this time through technology.
We worked on software and hardware for production monitoring in garment factories. The objective was to capture production information from the shop floor and make it available for supervisors and management without depending entirely on manual data collection.
We also worked on a large scale Manufacturing Execution System for the garment industry, covering different stages of production and connecting operational information across the factory.
Coming back to garments through technology was personally meaningful. I could see some of the same production problems I had seen early in my career, but now I was looking at them through the lens of software, data, connectivity and automation.
From Connectivity to Industrial Platforms
Over the years, the scope expanded from machine connectivity to complete industrial applications.
We have worked across:
- Machine and device connectivity
- MQTT and messaging
- Edge gateways
- Industrial protocols
- Production monitoring
- Manufacturing applications
- MES
- OEE
- WIP and traceability
- Energy monitoring
- Production planning
- Industrial data and analytics
There is a common thread across all of this.
The technology has to work in the real environment where people, machines, processes and existing systems all have to coexist.
This website is not the Bevywise website. Bevywise is part of my journey, and the experience I have gained through it naturally influences what I write and think about here.
Returning to Manufacturing Through Technology
When I look back at my career, there is an interesting circle.
I started with Mechanical Engineering.
Then I spent my first 1.5 years working in garment manufacturing.
I moved into software and spent many years building software products.
Then I started working on Industrial IoT, edge systems and manufacturing technology.
So, in a way, I came back to manufacturing from a completely different direction.
The difference is that I now look at a factory with both perspectives. The perspective of someone who has been close to manufacturing operations and the perspective of someone who has spent decades building software systems.
That is what interests me about manufacturing digital transformation.
I am less interested in using the latest technology just because it is available. I am more interested in whether it helps a planner plan better, a supervisor understand what is happening, an operator do the job better, or a business make a better decision.
For me, that is where technology becomes useful.
Today
Today, my work sits across a few related areas:
- Manufacturing digital transformation
- Software architecture
- Application modernization
- Industrial IoT
- Edge computing and connected systems
- Industrial protocols
- Manufacturing software and MES
- Data and AI
- Technology products
I continue to learn through the work, through conversations with people, through the problems we encounter and through the things that do not work as expected.
I also write about what I learn and what I observe.
If something here connects with a problem you are working on, or you simply want to exchange ideas, start a conversation.
