Industrials

<p style="text-align: justify;">In the last couple of years, manufacturing has emerged as a high-growth sector in India, with the potential to reach US$ 1 trillion by 2025, per a study by IBEF. And digitalization will have a large role to play in helping our industry get there.&nbsp;</p><p style="text-align: justify;">In the current challenging situation, the digital landscape is constantly evolving. Industries want to bring back normalcy at the earliest. Manufacturers are keen to fast-track innovation and technology modernization to streamline processes, help usher in manufacturing excellence and increase operational efficiencies. They realize the need to add more value with a quicker turnaround time. Rapid changes in consumer expectations and technology improvements also trigger this.&nbsp;</p><p style="text-align: justify;">In summary, digitalization brings numerous advantages, such as helping companies to adapt to changes faster or even anticipate changes before they occur &ndash; all crucially important to manufacturing in an agile economy. Digitalization reduces the manufacturing cycle time and dependence on manual processes (thereby minimizing human errors); it&rsquo;s also helping manufacturers improve productivity, accuracy, and quality. Digitalization also directly impacts businesses, their suppliers, customers, and other third parties.&nbsp;</p><h2 style="text-align: justify;"><br /><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Digital Strategy and Innovation Roadmap&nbsp;</span></h2><p style="text-align: justify;">What kind of technology solutions need to be adopted in this journey?&nbsp;</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Organizations should focus more on in-house digital initiatives involving various internal stakeholders during these challenging times. In-house initiatives prove to be very helpful in bringing in manufacturing excellence and will help to unlock significant value for the business.&nbsp;</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Expediting innovation/digitalization efforts will help to add value to the business. This should be complemented by an on-premises IT setup, with application continuity, availability, and scaling challenges. Also, managing a data center might drain resources and efficiency. In such a situation, organizations should think of moving to Public Cloud Infrastructure for its superior cloud economics &ndash; in addition to providing enterprise-grade capabilities such as advanced security, guaranteed high performance, and high availability. &nbsp;</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Various digital efforts will make a difference to the business and the end customers in deriving various business benefits&nbsp;</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Lower cost of ownership and reduced maintenance costs have been a welcome benefit. By using Public Cloud Infrastructure, an organization can anticipate at least a 20% improvement in performance. The switch to an OPEX IT model will help us realize upfront cost savings of 20 to 30%. More importantly, this will help organizations concentrate on core business and avoid getting bogged down with managing routine IT tasks.&nbsp;</p><p style="text-align: justify;">All these initiatives will help organizations witness an enhanced internal customer experience &ndash; speed, high application availability, and effectively completing tasks on time.&nbsp;</p><p style="text-align: justify;">&nbsp;</p><p style="text-align: justify;">&nbsp;</p><p style="text-align: justify;">&nbsp;</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><em>This article was contributed by our expert <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/rajeevkhade/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Rajeev Khade</a></em></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;">&nbsp;</p><p style="text-align: justify;">&nbsp;</p><h3 style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 18pt;">Frequently Asked Questions Answered by Rajeev Khade &nbsp;</span></h3><p style="text-align: justify;">&nbsp;</p><h2 style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">1. How is Indian manufacturing embracing digital transformation? </span></h2><p style="text-align: justify;">The Indian industry has chosen digitalization as an important option to optimize manufacturing operations and add value to business processes. The industry has witnessed this during and post-COVID phase. The amount of digitalization in the last two years has been far more than what the industry followed in the past ten years or so. This is mainly because the benefits of digitalization are high, quick, and help to add value in terms of quality enhancement, accuracy, and savings in terms of man hours. &nbsp;</p><p style="text-align: justify;">&nbsp;</p><h2 style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">2. What is the importance of digitalization in the Indian economy?&nbsp;</span></h2><p style="text-align: justify;">The importance of digitalization in the Indian industry is quite on the higher side as in the last decade. The country has been witnessing growth in all sectors, including the manufacturing sector. All sectors have also embraced digitalization for quick responses to customer needs, faster time to market, and order to pay. This is equally true in the financial and banking sectors also. Online transactions have increased substantially in the last decade or so. All these round efforts and quick acceptance by all have helped the Indian economy to grow faster and are also poised for a promising future. &nbsp;</p><p style="text-align: justify;">&nbsp;</p><h2 style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">3. What are the innovations of the manufacturing sector?&nbsp;</span></h2><p style="text-align: justify;">In the last few years, we have all seen that all manufacturing industries, whether small, medium, or large scale, have started implementing Industry 4.0 projects. Earlier, all these were far-fetched or used to be buzzwords. But now it has become a need of the hour. Senior management has been promoting such projects in their industries. &nbsp;</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Technologies like Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality by use of gadgets like HoloLens are becoming increasingly common due to the tremendous amount of convenience and cost savings that it offers. Digital twins offer to visualize the changes required to be done in the existing setup and to visualize the future factory. &nbsp;</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Traceability with the help of sensors and tags helps to drill down to the problem areas and identify the source. Remote access with the help of various mechanisms can help resolve manufacturing issues, reducing downtime substantially. &nbsp;</p><p style="text-align: justify;">&nbsp;</p><h2 style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">4. How can we improve the digital infrastructure in the manufacturing sector?</span>&nbsp;</h2><p style="text-align: justify;">Although we have made much progress in digitalization recently, there needs to be more IT OT Security. We hear of cyber-attacks, ransomware, etc., very often. The IT OT systems need to be safeguarded by stronger measures. IT &amp; OT Infrastructure needs to be demarked. It should not be the same. It needs to be isolated. The external perimeters need to be more and more robust so that the risk of attacks from the external world is kept away and the systems are not compromised. The external access/network and even the OT systems need to have more redundancy in terms of high availability.&nbsp;</p><p style="text-align: justify;">&nbsp;</p><p style="text-align: justify;">&nbsp;</p><p style="text-align: justify;">&nbsp;</p><p style="text-align: justify;">&nbsp;</p>