Collaboration of Kremenchug Automobile Plant and scientific institutions, scientists, lecturers and students of technical institutions of higher education gins stream. Students of Odessa National Polytechnic University, organizers and representatives of the first student race team in Ukraine Formula Student ONPU came yesterday, November 7, with a series of questions to the automobile plant designers. The letter addressed to the automobile plant officers asking to visit “KrAZ” says that ONPU students have been designing and building vehicles from scratch for six years and it would be interesting for them to see and learn about real production of mass produced vehicle and participate in any joint project. Their vision of collaboration includes joint projects, employment of graduates, task preparation of students, educational tours, etc.
Working schedule of young Odessa residents was very tight, major questions they discussed with the company’s technical departments related to design and tests of new and mass produced trucks as follows:
- How the chassis is designed and built?
- How new vehicles are designed?
- Is there any experience of joint projects with student design bureaus?
- Advanced technologies and computer-aided design;
- What do engineering graduates lack when they come to work to the plant?
During their working trip the students visited engineering building, could see test benches of Test Centre and process of laboratory and bench tests of units, systems, components and truck as a whole unit. They also visited the company’s proving ground where scheduled tests of armored vehicles were underway, got information about manufacturing chain of the main assembly line, equipment of Training Centre, and went to the museum of plant history. By the way, in the Training Centre they discussed particularities of development of new vehicles with managers of support units of the automobile plant. Given that Formula Student is an international engineering competition, according to its rules student teams compete with cars they designed and built they lack knowledge in design, calculations and testing of prototypes.
Before saying goodbye they thanked for educational, useful and rich in events visit to domestic manufacturer, for informative meetings and fruitful work this day. “KrAZ” is always responsive to initiative of progressively-minded youth for collaboration or request for help in technical issues. “KrAZ” is waiting for new entrants into its labor force to build new Ukrainian vehicles by efforts of new generation.
