Manufacturers and technology providers from various parts of the country virtually met to discuss global technology trends and its application in the Indian context at the 5th Annual Smart Manufacturing Summit, 2021. Organised by ITP, the day-long event was presented by Dell Technologies, Intel Innovation Built-in and Microsoft. Collaborating in the partnership were Engineering Design Partner, Autodesk; Energy Management Partner, Schneider Electric; and HVAC Partner, Bluestar.
Ten interactive sessions, unprecedented detail on technical innovations presented in unique sessions, real-time case studies on disruptive technologies with over 20 speakers from multiple manufacturing sectors highlighted this exclusive summit as an unparallel learning experience for the Indian manufacturing companies.
Amritha Mohankumar, Event Manager, ITP Media (India) who hosted the event invited Bibhor Srivastava, Country Head, ITP India, to open the summit. After a brief introduction to ITP, its wide portfolio of market leading digital properties, a number of its initiatives with some of the premium brands, its reach and the range of incredible global titles that it does, Bibhor thanked the partners and the attendees and invited Rishav Bhushan, Director & General Manager, OEM Solutions, Dell Technologies, to present his welcome note.
Bhushan, welcoming all the delegates dived straight in to the discussion on smart manufacturing and shared Dell technologies’ vision on smart factories and how he sees that panning out in the next 3-4 years.
“Year 2025 is a very critical one”, he said speaking about the future of manufacturing powered by emerging technologies. “A lot, in fact 80% of the data will be generated at the edge in the next 3-4 years and that is where all the conversation on technology will shift to.”
“With manufacturing in India projected to hit a trillion-dollar revenue by 2025 and with a lot of it hedged around technology advancement there is a lot of work for technology providers to do,” he added. Innovative technologies and its scalability can transform manufacturing. But, “it is not about a single factory line; it is about the entire connected ecosystem that needs transformation”.
His colleague, Gopalan Govindrajan, Enterprise Technologist at Dell took the questions from the audience brought to him answered them engagingly.
Jagdish Ramaswamy, President and Chief Digital Officer, Hindalco Industries, who gave the key-note address, said, “Digital, data, smart, connected, insights; these are the magic words that are fast becoming buzz words in the board rooms across organisations.”
“Moving ahead of digitisation, what we are now looking at is how we are leveraging these digital technologies to behave and work like a connected enterprise; where humans and machines and processes are talking to each other in real time basis and then seeing if we can leverage this to bring in new business models”.
With these words Ramaswamy sought to trigger the thoughts of how the audience approach smart manufacturing; the subject of the day.
Panel I: Digital Transformation Roadmap and Future Outlook
Moderating the discussion, Abhijeet Ranade, Partner, KPMG, began on a cautionary note asking the panellists if industry 4.0 is a hype or a reality. Panellists were prompt in their response that the transformation was for real and cited real life experiences to validate their contention.
“The consumer has learned more about food hygiene in last eighteen months than they had learnt in that many years,” said Shirish Yadav, VP Manufacturing & Technology, ITC Foods, with his food business experience. “Rising and unpredictable consumer demand is putting a lot pressure on businesses who are now looking for technologies to provide solutions to meet the challenge.”
Sunil Khurana, Executive Vice President Operations, JCB, said that they were doing two machines a day but are doing 350 now and looking at days when from the current five-six variant in 100 days, they could be doing a hundred variant. “That kind of complexities is just not possible manually,” he said.
Atul Govil, Chief Transformation Officer & Head (SAP & IT), India Glycols ltd reminded of the days when Cloud technology used to be brushed aside just the same way but now finds pronounced usage in the industry.
“Today we are at an inflection time,” said Manish Gulati, Director – Corporate Sales, Dell Technologies, referring to the rapid adoption of technologies that has brought the term manufacturing 4.0 into the mainstream. “That is largely due to the availability of IoT infrastructure designed to gain business insights from data and the biggest driver that all of us are waiting for is the 5G that is going to change phenomenally the way things work today versus what we have been doing all the time.”
He further added, “While the IoT is providing deeper insights into the processes, AI looks at the aggregate delivery. Putting this together, you get a larger 360 degrees holistic picture.”
Gulati proceeded to put the entire perspective about smart manufacturing, digitisation and the overall manufacturing process in a nutshell with great precision and clarity.
As a technology provider to the manufacturing segment, Kaustubh Joshi, Director- Consumer Packaging Goods, Schneider Electric, presented the perspective from the other side of the table.
“We look at what is the larger problem statement in terms of business priority, automating the thought process, ensuring lesser intervention of people and how do we apply technology to help a better ease on the overall manufacturing,” said Joshi speaking about Schneider’s approach to innovative technologies.
Panel II: Balancing Asset Management with Logistics: Initiatives for Tomorrow
The VUKA moment is finally here, after all the talks all these years about Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous periods. Rajeev Singh, Partner and Automotive Leader, Deloitte India, coming from among the Big4, began to moderate the discussion with these words; looking to find the way in to the secrets of the recipes of the panel members, trying to get an insight into their business practices that make them successful.
“We are still evolving our SOPs on how to deal with the disruptions caused by the pandemics,” began Ajoy Lall, Vice President, Commercial Vehicle Operations, Tata Motors, who thought that unlike in the immediate aftermath of the first pandemic, “the supply chain industry has now learnt to deal with it. It’s the demand side that weakening the economy.” He narrated anecdotes of how innovative ways were found around the problem by the supply chain.
“The silver lining amidst all the negatives of the lockdowns was that it served as a catalyst especially for the digital initiatives in organisations resulting in sudden and exponential spike in embracing technologies,” said Singh and asked Zurvan Marolia, Sr Vice President and Head of the Manufacturing Council, Godrej & Boyce Mfg, to come in on it.
Marolia absolutely agreed with him and went a step further to say that “the pandemic has actually pushed the nation forward by 8-10 years”. Explaining how his organisation faced the pandemic challenge, he said, resilience, apart from business continuity and safety, became the focus area, at the core of which was digitisation, “We took it as a time to re-set, re-invent and re-engineer.”
Robotics was already there but was enhanced further as part of what he called “appropriate automation”. A process known as ‘manufacturing execution system’ that was already in place was immediately put to use. With this, they were able to run their plans remotely, have unhindered and secured information flow. “The voice of the customer could come right down to the manufacturing floor.”
The discussions took an interesting turn when it touched upon the criticality of capital equipment in the journey of digitisation.
“Machines have to stay healthy and there has to be some standard protocol to assure that they are complied with, “said Arobinda Mookherjee, Director, JNJ Machines and brushed upon conventional condition-based monitoring and overall equipment effectiveness; residual asset-life and asset replacements; system reviews and system alarms. But he also talked of algorithms to check on the health of the machines like an ECG reading and communicating the residual asset-life.
From manufacturing, Singh shifted to supply chain. “Complex and fragmented with the holy trinity of speed, cost and reliability as parameters of efficiency, the capabilities built and initiatives taken by the supply chain is an interesting study.”
“The biggest challenge is the last mile delivery,” flagged Sachith Varma, Vice President- Customer Experience & Supply Chain, SKF India. However, “Matured eco-system of the supply chain particularly brought about by e-commerce, with their kind of technology platform, is giving near real-time visibility of products”.
“A business model like that of Mahindra Logistics, which is a 4PL partner giving their technology platform to small players, is able to draw large business from multiple partners without owning the fleet but just by leveraging the eco-system,” revealed Varma.
In a similar way, the panellists saw the need for more of the larger players with new technologies to partner with the SMES and inculcate a growth mind-set in them.
Special presentation: Future of Manufacturing
Sanjeev Ghosh, Senior Technical Sales Specialist for design and manufacturing industry at Engineering Design Partner Autodesk, made a special presentation on the Future of Manufacturing.
He talked about three key trends that are reshaping the way you do business today.
The nature of products themselves are changing. The incorporation of software provides the ability to embrace smart product development and deliver products that are more intelligent and connected to the world around them. Secondly, there is growing customers demand for tailor-made products, in a shorter space of time and providing increasing value beyond the point of sale. Finally, an influx of technologies and techniques like generative design, industrial additives, metal-based printing; technologies and techniques that are capable of realising very complex production processes.
He cited an amazing example of Autodesk collaborating with Airbus to create the world’s largest 3D printed airplane component using algorithms that generated a design that mimics cellular structure and bone growth and then produced using additive techniques rendering the structure stronger and lighter.
A 20-minute journey through the amazing world of technology in manufacturing.
Panel III: Design and Manufacturing Convergence to create smart products
“Digital transformation begins with the convergence between design and manufacturing, putting data at the centre to connect the organisation and ultimately unlocking the power of automation, leading to increased production and business growth.” With these words, Rajesh Nath, Managing Director, German Engg Federation (VDMA) India Office, gave a perspective to the panel discussion and began by drawing Shardul Kshirsagar, MD & CEO, Fowler Westrup, for his views on what is meant by smart product and what goes into building of a smart product.
“Adaptability to the customer requirement and connectivity to organisations with intelligent networks is what a smart product fundamentally is,” replied Kshirsagar.
This brought in Santanu Satpathy – Head Engineering, JK Tyres and Industries, from the tyre industry who had an interesting take on customer requirement with the introduction of e-vehicle. “The only noise in an e-vehicle you hear is the noise of the tyre. With inputs from the field technology the products are evolving to address this issue”
With 26 years in the automotive industry and India’s first internet car behind him, Sameer Jindal, Director Engineering, MG Motor India, emphasised team work. “Automotive is built only by the cross functional teams with integration of all in teams including those from production, supply chains, plants and even purchasing and after sales team. In his organisation, all work in PDT (product development team) to launch a successful products.”
“Customer need is where it has all to start from; be it smart product in any industry and it has to come from the entire organisation end-to-end, not merely engineering or manufacturing and it also has to have a clear objective,” said Mukesh Lalchandani, General Manager, Atlas Copco India Limited, elaborating with example from his organisation. “A clear objective like energy efficiency, high reliability, high uptime or cost optimisation is set and run through the entire framework to get the right output of feedbacks from mechanical to production to the fields.”
“With pandemic, it is time to turn challenges of today into opportunities for tomorrow to keep your business competitive.” And for this, “convergence of design and manufacturing is more relevant now than ever before,” said K V Veerapandian, Head-Technical Sales Autodesk, India and SAARC, succinctly.
The discussion continued with engaging thoughts at the end of which searching questions were taken from the audience for panellists to answer.
From the attendance and discussion, it was clear that the stalwarts in the industry are absolutely tune in to the idea of making India one of the key manufacturing hubs of the world.