‘Digital India’ pushes for digital manufacturing

By OEM Update Editorial June 29, 2017 3:12 pm IST

The thrust of “Digital India” with favourable sops, will also facilitate the transition to digitisation in manufacturing.

It is the right time for Indian manufacturers to make the best out of ‘digitisation’ initiative. There has been witnessed sparks of digital manufacturing with overseas giants setting up shops in India, which will have stringent requirement of qualitative and timely deliveries with monitoring and measurement digital tools in place and, hence have to embrace the new technology to keep afloat. Industry 4.0 is all about digitisation and companies orienting themselves to the customer through e-commerce, digital marketing, social media, and the customer experience.

In conversation with OEM Update, Nishit Behera, Vice President, Business Development & Strategy of RSB Transmissions (I) Ltd expresses his views on how digitisation is going to drive the Indian manufacturing sector.

Importance of adopting digitisation in manufacturing process
In the Industry Vision 4.0, where emphasis is on enterprises getting more digitised – an evolutionary critical element in manufacturing process and Supply Chain Management (SCM) towards a connected, smart, highly efficient and transparent system.

Traditionally, it has been largely a discrete and isolated phenomena passing through marketing, product development, manufacturing and distribution, and ultimately into the hands of customer. Digitisation brings down these walls and entire chain gets completely integrated into a system which is fully transparent involving all players in the chain – i.e. from the suppliers of raw materials, components, manufacture, warehousing, after-sales support, etc to the transporters and finally into the hands of customers mandating fulfilment of indent conditions.

Evidently, the network will depend upon a number of key technologies, integrated planning, logistic, visibility, autonomous logistic, smart procurement and warehousing, machine-to-machine component movement, spare parts management and advanced analytics. Such integration will enable enterprises to take corrective actions in chain bottlenecks and even anticipate them by fully modelling the net work, creating “what-if” scenarios, moderating the chain in real time as conditions change.

Once digitisation is put in place, network will offer a new degree of responsiveness enabling enterprises to be competitive and reach customers with efficient and transparent delivery with CARE (Customers Are Really Everything).

Industry 4.0, is the fourth industrial revolution, superseding the Industry 1.0 – steam and water power, Industry 2.0 – electrification and recently Industry 3.0, digital computers. Industry 4.0 is all about digitisation and companies orienting themselves to the customer through e-commerce, digital marketing, social media, and the customer experience. Ultimately, virtually every aspect of business will be transformed through the vertical integration of research and development, manufacturing, marketing and sales, and other internal operations, and new business models based on these advances.

Witnessing sparks of digital manufacturing with overseas giants
Indian manufacturers are already witnessing sparks of digital manufacturing with overseas giants setting up shops in India, which will have stringent requirement of qualitative and timely deliveries with monitoring and measurement digital tools in place and, hence have to embrace the new technology to keep afloat.

The transition will entail investments in the set-up, e-connectivity of status of movement of machine-to-machine components to track on delivery schedules on-line/remote monitoring and innovative methods in order to align to the new requirements. The thrust of “Digital India” with favourable sops, will also facilitate the transition to digitisation in manufacturing.

RSB in tune with digitisation in manufacturing process
RSB with a “Continual Improvement” has deeply implanted in every sphere of the activity and use of latest state-of-art machines/robotics, manufacturing high precision components measured to microns, are exploring the technology for component manufacture keeping Industry 4.0 in view, to be in tune with digitisation in manufacturing process. Apart, from this RSB having a subsidiary, named I-Design Engineering Solutions, is also keeping tab on advancement in manufacturing technology, digitisation and its adoption.