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Breaking the glass ceilings
Women at TCIN are steering automotive engineering. We have entered an era of progress and cutting-edge technology where every skilled individual who forms the workforce has a fair chance of learning. Hence, women must represent a fair share of the capable force to explore opportunities alongside their male counterparts.
Let us discover what TCIN signifies to our most resilient team members,
What TCIN means for Apoorva Radhakrishnan: A journey she cherishes!
Apoorva joined TCIN as an engineer with a dream to explore and learn. The cross-functional teams and the collaborative environment excited her from day one. She says, "I feel a sense of pride." What makes her life more thrilling is seeing the impact that she and her team's work has on the day-to-day life of consumers of Toyota cars. She adds, "We are a bunch of inquisitive and enthusiastic engineers at TCIN."
In shifting the focus from engineering to a combined effort of engineering and software-based initiative, the entire team updates and upskills themselves to cater to the rapid evolution in mobility. The aspect of connected mobility made this journey unique since it helped combine the perspectives of both the user (in this case, the driver) and the engineer. As a car user, she analyzed what she needed in the connected vehicle to enhance the passengers' comfort and safety features.The vehicle's capability to identify any damage to the brake pad or other parts can help the consumer avoid surprises in parts replacement and vehicle downtime. In addition, such predictive maintenance technology can empower the consumer to plan vehicle maintenance better. She stresses the need for such sensory information that helped TCIN engineers build models that can be cost-efficient in the long run. As an engineer, she understands the consumer's thought process to create, innovate, and deploy technology inspired by real-life challenges.
The TCIN journey also helped her consider the challenges an opportunity to learn and create something great. Being a patron of mathematics, engineering, and artificial intelligence, she mentions, "I can creatively use both engineering and artificial intelligence to solve problems."
Technology is a great leveler – the same is visible in TCIN culture, where regardless of gender or background, contribution in terms of innovation matters.
TCIN from Swati's perspective: Challenges and learning
Swathi Manoravi is a product owner in TCIN who designs the guidelines for building a product from scratch. She compartmentalizes the approach into actionable tasks and engages people to execute them to launch the finished product. She confesses, "I feel proud when people choose the product I designed and show their trust in it. But, again, I feel nervous since I don't know how people will react to my product."
As a product owner, she empathizes with customers to understand their pain points; simultaneously, she collaborates with internal and external stakeholders to understand their perspectives. While talking about the TCIN team: "I am fortunate to have a passionate and self-driven team."
She mentioned that the mobility industry adopted IoT 2 decades before the other sectors. She continuously works with cutting-edge technology and believes that the industry is going through disruption, which has opened the horizon of opportunities, partnerships, new ways of thinking, innovation, and efficiency. Such growing opportunities enabled the team of engineers at TCIN to think differently and build a car that can become a friend and interact with the consumer. Such vehicles can also be customized with feature subscriptions and enhanced safety. She adds, "The industry is changing fast, and we are leading innovation in this space."
She identified a few challenges in working with the latest technologies and pioneer projects where there is a lot of ambiguity due to a lack of available data. Also, with connected mobility, there is always an expectation of privacy that needs to be prioritized so that consumers can trust the brand. Here, young female leadership in mobility played a crucial role in thinking differently and bringing new perspectives with passion and a self-driven approach. She proudly said, "What I like about TCIN is the broad mindset and mutual respect for one another."
TCIN for Padma Priya: A fantastic place to be
Padma Priya is a product owner in TCIN who designs and adds features to the vehicle as per popular consumer demands. These features are then utilized to address and resolve customer pain points. Knowing that she can resolve customer issues with cutting-edge technology excites her. She says, "We offer seamless customer experience via smartphones, smartwatches, and voice assistance like Alexa."
She mentioned one of the features TCIN developed, which is being used daily, such as Wi-Fi in the moving vehicle. This feature becomes the hotspot of the vehicle. Also, the infotainment system enhanced the driving experience. She adds, "TCIN EPIC values help us align with the organization's goals and vision." Vehicles are no longer just a commute; consumers can now book their car parking space, listen to the radio, etc., with the help of the car infotainment system. With innovation creating new opportunities and the consistent and potential growth of connected technologies, she feels she is in the right place.
She is part of the team that develops a mobile application that can remove the complexity of the legacy app and provide a single interface to customers. The field of connected tech is all about creating solutions for the future. She explained the example of congestion management where TCIN offers a solution combining the real-time data of the vehicle with predictive models. She mentions, "We create such solutions daily."
She is one of those employees who believes that TCIN offered her the opportunity to be part of the team, transforming the vehicle ownership experience with mutual respect, patience, and proper orientation.
Being a part of TCIN, in Sreedevi's words
Sreedevi Rajagopal has worked with TCIN as a senior engineer for two years. According to her, what excites her the most is being part of a team that creates solutions for car safety. Recently, cars have become a natural extension of our lives. Hence, we expect a lot of convenience and safety from cars. Her work revolves around this area, where she ensures that every person inside the vehicle is safe.
She mentions, "TCIN is all about creating innovative solutions with evolving technologies." Hence, cars are transforming daily; they are no longer used as a means of transportation and have become living spaces. She explains further, "Although hardware innovations are much needed, connected mobility provides a holistic experience." Leveraging cutting-edge technology enabled TCIN to offer features such as automatic collision notification, autonomous emergency brake, lane assistance, pedestrian airbag deployment, etc. Moreover, the algorithm directly into such innovation can save many lives. She states excitedly, "I am in a team where we decide how a car has to behave in the event of a crash. We are a tech team in the business of saving lives."
She mentioned that at TCIN, every employee is encouraged to collaborate with different global teams where disruptive solutions are created. She also shared how it felt to be a part of a rapidly growing industry like that of connected vehicles and mentioned the need for passion and commitment toward continuous learning.
She proudly adds, "I save lives; I install sleeping pods and bunk beds." What still amazes her is that when she joined TCIN, she knew nothing about cars, but her years here helped her grow with knowledge and skills of the latest technologies that go into making a car.
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