OREANDA-NEWS. On his appointment as Director on the Board of Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL), Mr. T.N. Veeraraghavan, 59, has assumed charge as Director (Engineering, Research & Development) of the Maharatna Public Sector engineering and manufacturing enterprise. Prior to this, he was heading the company's Boiler Auxiliaries Plant at Ranipet as Executive Director. An Electrical Engineer from University of Visvesvaraya College of Engineering, Bangalore and an MBA in Financial Management from the Department of Commerce and Management, Bangalore University; Mr. Veeraraghavan is a gold medalist of Visvesvaraya University & Bangalore University and also holds the unique distinction of getting a state award in 1987 for academic excellence. Mr. Veeraraghavan has 38 years of diversified and versatile professional experience through working in major segments of BHEL. He has handled a variety of assignments in strategic as well as operational areas in various capacities and functions. He was elevated to the position of Executive Director in July, 2011. Starting his career in BHEL as an Engineer Trainee at Bangalore in 1977, he was involved in production of control equipment and engineering of controls for combined cycle plants. He was instrumental in setting up state-of-the-art facilities for manufacturing and testing of Electronic Automation Systems for steam turbines at Bangalore in line with practices at KWU/Siemens. Subsequently, Mr. Veeraraghavan was involved in establishing the manufacturing and testing facilities at Bangalore for speedtronic Mark-IV controls for gas turbines in line with those established at General Electric, USA. Under his stewardship, a number of productivity projects were mentored by him in the manufacturing and engineering areas relating to value engineering, economic buying and import substitution resulting in huge savings with regard to time and money for the organization. Mr. Veeraraghavan has also earlier headed BHEL's Spares and Services Business Group at Delhi dealing with spares, services, renovation and modernization of thermal/hydro power stations across the country, and later the company's Transmission Business Group at Delhi.