Mr. Krishnamurthy Raghunandan is a Full-time Consultant, Advisor (Technical/ Marketing) to Murata Machinery, Ltd., Machine Tool Division in Yokohama, Japan. He completed M. Tech. from IIT Bombay in Mechanical Engineering in 1972.
Mr. Ranghunandan’s semi-professional stint started as an under-graduate summer trainee at Bharat Forge in Pune, where he gained first-hand shop floor experience on how a forging factory looks like and works. Similarly, as a post-graduate summer trainee at HMT Bangalore in the Hydraulics systems Division, he learnt basics of industrial design and research in Machine Tools. His very first full professional experience started off at an L&T group company during 1972-73 in Odisha as an engineer, where he was involved in re-building old German machine tools in the shop floor. His guru was a foreman who taught him the basics of scraping beds and machine tool alignment in addition to managing a team of shop floor stalwarts. Due to family circumstances, he shortly returned to Pune to work with the then prestigious TELCO in Machine Tools R&D division. From 1975 to 1981, Mr. Raghunandan worked with a Machine Tools Sales and Service Distributor for European and American machines and instrumentation with multiple roles of selling and servicing on all-India basis. During 1975-81, he went to UK and Japan on a four-months trip to develop new principals and advanced training in variety of machine tools and instrumentation products. In 1981, Mr. Raghunandan moved to Japan with family and started a new way of life but still with Machine Tools as a career. Following typical Japanese work culture, since then, Mr. Raghunandan has been with the same Japanese company till date (post official retirement as well as a full-time consultant).
During this four decade period, he has gained experience in shop floor development; global marketing and sales including travel – from New Zealand to Canada round the world (about 30 countries); lived in Germany (6 years) to set up EU operations; and developed variety of database software for sales and engineering from the onset of computer introduction.
He had been recognized by IITBAA as “Volunteer of Month” in February 2015 in the very early stages of his involvement with IITBAA Japan Chapter. He has received several awards and recognitions from his employers as well as associates in the fields of “Introducing innovations in shop floor”, “Introducing digitization pre- and post- computer era”, “Achieving top sales targets in various countries”, “Introducing Product Life Management System in machine tools”, and “Introducing AI database system for metal cutting”.
Mr. Raghunandan has contributed to IIT Bombay mainly in bringing 100+ alumni in Japan together to give a proper structure to Japan chapter, encouraging alumni in Japan to participate as EC members annually, bringing Interns and alumni in Japan together to exchange information about various facets of life, career and culture in Japan, introducing IIT Bombay management to various corporates, and academia and government bodies in Japan to enhance recruitment, and R&D and academic cooperation resulting in MoU between IIT Bombay with NEC Japan. He is also involved in connecting IIT Bombay alumni to Pan IIT circles to enlarge participation in wider range of activities.
Sharing his memories at IIT Bombay, Mr. Raghunandan said, “ After being a day scholar right up to graduation in Pune, getting into hostel life away from family was a totally new experience. Initial few months were in Hostel 6 amidst undergraduates. Witnessing ragging in hostel but not being ragged myself was the first lesson. Subsequent days in the royal PG1 hostel were a totally contrasting experience. The entire period of 2 years life in IIT Bombay was a special memory and I could write a full book someday. I think every student should go through such experience in their life, if circumstances permit”.
About his hobbies, Mr. Raghunandan, says “Driving around in countries has been a passion (now miss the 280 kmph autobahn drives in Germany in Audi A6), visiting religious centres, museums, castles and natural greenery (with wife) in any country, developing database software for variety of purposes (started with Fortran in IIT Bombay) starting with a tri-lingual word processor in MS-DOS era, and reciting Vedas (learnt from school days in Sanskrit)”.