‘Smart’ manufacturing set to redefine Industry 4.0, say experts

The Information Age has now paved the way for Industry 4.0, where smart technologies drive business. Megha Mehdiratta, who represented Invest India, DIPP, said while the focus was on FDI from industry bodies such as Ficci, Nasscom and the CII, ongoing efforts were to handhold investors from pre-investment stage. 

In Tamil Nadu, for instance, when a Japanese industrial machinery company Sanritsu  set up its base in 2014, the DIPP entity had set up the facilitation body. This included helping the firm liaison with Natrip and also allocating space for research of copper taken out from wires of auto. 

Likewise in 1989, Invest India aided Vestas to set up its greenfield manufacturing unit in the country by getting 20-25 license clearances at a quick pace. In less than two years, 60 candidates from Skill Council were sourced for Vestas. 

With a 7.7 per cent GDP of  $2.6 trillion, 1.5 billion population forecast for 2025 and April 2014 to May 2018 attracting $222 billion investment, India is perceived as a large market potential. 

The ‘Make in India’ opportunity is to touch $4.8 trillion but instead of only four states fuelling investments now, the basket had to be expanded. Over 90 per cent FDI (foreign direct investment) came through the automatic route and the country having an ecosystem of 20,000 plus start-ups, 5,000 tech bases and over 20,000 industrial centres, autonomous thinking is the order of the day. 

Boeing, for instance, has a project with IISc to nurture this, Mehdiratta said adding Bosch has 15 plus factories going the smart way to shorten manufacturing throughput time. 

States are competing with one another with Andhra setting a goal of turning into a IoT hub; IIT-Madras collaborating with health tech firms to make Chennai the digital capital of India riding on the AI, Blockchain and other emerging technologies. 

“With 60 to 65 per cent  of jobs in IT-BPM to be changed by 2022, 90 per cent firms expect data to significantly impact operations in five years,” she said, noting that one million security jobs focused on cyber space would be up for grabs by 2025. 

Moderating a panel discussion on Digital disruptions in manufacturing, K Prasanna Sai of Sai Advisory Services said the allocation of capex would now have to consider analytics and intelligence, human, machine and GuI (graphic user interface) and conversion of the physical world plus robotics among other things. 

Going digital would typically assure 10 to 40 per cent decline in maintenance costs, 20 to 50 per cent time to market reduction, 80 per cent accuracy forecasting, 20 per cent cost of quality outside CoPQ (cost of poor quality), 20 per cent better inventory management, 45 per cent individual productivity, 30 to 40 per cent machine downtime and 5 per cent productivity improvement. 

Mahesh Pathak, Senior Operations, Director, Avery Dennison India, presented an overview of the current trends in automation where the cyber (physical systems), IoT, Cloud computing and cognitive computing were all part of creating a smart factory infrastructure. 

Estimating the global IoT spends to be $1.3 trillion by 2020, he said manufacturing sector’s new digital divide lay between digital profit leaders and digital profit laggards. So, it is vital to think, invest and manage differently, he added.