I was working with the Ahmedabad Electricity company in Ahmedabad. The company had purchased a few CALMU meters from PI Industries. The year, as I remember it, was 1988 / 89. I was unable to meet the demand of tested meters, since we were facing an acute shortage of the Rotary Sub-Standard meter (RSS), used for testing single and three phase meters. Since CALMU meters are very accurate, it dawned on me, why don't I use them as the reference standard?
I tested the CALMU meter in our standard cell and found it to be much more accurate than the existing RSS meter. The challenge now was to create a jig that could be used to test meters. I came up with a 'jugaad'*, using CTs that were available with me, a CALMU meter, Cine MRI, power supply and a bulky phantom load set. This 'jugaad' resulted in savings of lakhs of rupees for the company and my output of tested meters increased. I showed this 'jugaad' to many visitors from Secure and asked their opinion.
To this they responded “our meter can be sold for this purpose also.” I was disappointed since the 'jugaad' was not appreciated by my seniors or the supplier of CALMU meters. Normally Shree Sanjay Sahab and Babel Sahab would visit our laboratory often; one day I plucked up the courage to show this 'jugaad' to them, with a fear of hearing a harsh word from them about it (hey, what shabby wiring and connections), but knew I had the courage to tolerate it.
Contrary to my expectations, both of them appreciated my effort and asked me, “What can we do to help you to test meters using CALMU?” During the discussion and subsequent visits, I told them that RSS meters were a rare commodity at the time, not only that, they were expensive and the indigenous ones were not reliable.
Furthermore, the testing of meters on-site was impossible because the RSS meter would get damaged in transportation. Hence if this jugaad could be packaged in a more robust way, on-site testing of meters at consumer' premises would be possible. This will increase the consumer satisfaction also.
In a few days time, Mr Babel came back with a nice package in a hand bag with a calculator to calculate the percentage error etc. I tried this in the laboratory as well as on-site. Over time we found other things that were needed. Mr Babel visited the site to get first hand information on the difficulties we faced on site, how we travelled on a bicycle or a motor-cycle (the word bike came later on, we were using the Bullet motor cycle).
A marketable version of the “Accuchek” was born in a vanity bag. Later on, as the need arose, many changes were incorporated to make the Accucheck of today.
*A jugaad is a solution put together with whatever is on hand.
G K Panchal has always guided us from time to time. He worked for our services team from April 2003 to September 2010. He is presently working with us as a consultant for the Energy Services business.