Digital technology to drive smart factories in future

Speaking at a recently-held manufacturing summit, Vivekanand Vanmeeganathan, Country Manager and MD, Caterpillar India, said version 4 of industrialization would put the focus on digital manufacturing as manufacturing has been perceived to be the biggest driver of GDP. Skilling for the present or the future would be the determining factor as the change that the industrial canvas will see is of a “tall order.” India has the youngest of the workforce in the world, that is, Gen X, whose expectations from the work environment are quite different from those of the earlier generations. 

Workplaces need to change as the demarcation between the white and blue collar workers should not exist any longer. Customers of today were seeking agile and flexible solutions and it is the preparedness of the industry to be smart enough to handle volatility that would shape the contours of digital manufacturing. 

Also, with shorter product life-cycles, the focus is on doing things faster and on the competitiveness parameter, leveraging technology would prove the growth and scale of businesses as even manufacturing cannot do things independently. NV Venkatasubramanian, Convenor, CII TN Manufacturing Panel drew attention to the aggressive intent of many countries to gear up their economies in the face of high volatility and uncertainty. 

“There will be major disruptions expected, and in these disruptions one has to find opportunities to survive,” he observed. “India, being the world’s third largest economy, after the US and China, is also one of the fastest growing economies with a GDP growth of over 7 per cent. 

To accelerate this growth further, it is important for the manufacturing sector to gear up and improve efficiencies and productivity multi-fold.”  Staying connected is so essential in every walk of life, including manufacturing, emphasized, S Srinivasan, Vice President & Head, RPM Business Unit, L&T Rubber Processing Machinery, in his special address at the recently-held CII summit on digital manufacturing. 

“After mechanisation of version 1.0, mass production of version 2.0, computerisation and automation of version 3.0, the industry version 4.0 is nothing but manufacturing in a well-connected cyber system world,” he outlined. Industry 4.0 is about making our factories smarter, having the ability to communicate with workstations in real-time, and being efficient in the use of energy and resources, observed Muthuraman Ramesh, Chairman, TN Manufacturing Summit 2016.