Industrial Automation Magazine India

The Impact of Emerging Technologies

Published on : Sunday 01-03-2020

Experts debate the impact of emerging technologies on industry in general, manufacturing operations in particular.

The power of the Internet has unleashed several business models leading to the emergence of a whole new set of technologies, not all of them new. Artificial Intelligence was mentioned in the 1950s, cloud computing in mid-1990s and so was Blockchain. Data has always been around without the means of sifting though it meaningfully. The proliferation of sensors in the IIoT era has only accelerated the pace of its generation. Together, these are the technologies that are helping enterprises in their digital transformation journey.

So what exactly is the kind of impact emerging technologies are having on automation in industry?

“There is a positive and a negative impact on the industry; the positive one is that emerging technologies like Artificial Intelligence and IoT have made the processes more efficient and trackable. The insights have become real-time and managers are able to make quick decisions on the basis of that,” says Adnyesh Dalpati – Architect, Technologist and an IoT Evangelist. “Coming to a negative impact, due to emerging technologies, there is a hype in the industry on who uses a certain technology first. Thanks to the FOMO (fear of missing out) factor, CxOs are more concerned to showcase themselves as AI-enabled or IoT-enabled or Blockchain-enabled company without actually looking into the real use cases which need their attention.”

“I think we have reached the peak of automation software impact. What is really going to revolutionise processes across organisations and drive industrial automation here on are emerging technologies such as IoT, cloud, mobility, analytics, virtual reality (VR), artificial intelligence, etc. These emerging systems will replace real time systems with complex, adaptive and predictive systems,” says Achyuta Ghosh, Head – Research, NASSCOM. “IIoT driven smart manufacturing will enable automated, configurable and flexible setups.

Anand V, Managing Partner, Anasup Consulting, is of the opinion that emerging technologies are bringing digital transformation for industrial automation. “These technologies are conceptualised with the need of solving pain points for the customers. The fundamental compute and storage for these technologies are provided by cloud computing be it SaaS, PaaS, IaaS, CaaS and overall XaaS – Everything as a Service. Top up is the AI layer, which brings the data points and analytics suitable for the product or platform development. Blockchain as an enabler brings transparency, immutability with privacy and security to the whole ecosystems,” he opines.

“The combinatorial power of technologies like AI, IoT, Cloud and Blockchain will lead the next wave of Industrial automation,” says Navveen Balani, AI, Blockchain & IoT Leader.

“New technologies like IoT, cloud computing, Industry4.0 and AI are actually changing the way industries operate, with new business models to generate higher revenues. All these trends involve a lot of devices networked together and a lot of data available to do things. They also include deciding whether data is stored and applications accessed from the computer next to you or from a server located somewhere else,” adds Pravin Bambal, Vertical Leader (Industry4.0).

How is Artificial Intelligence helping the cause of fully autonomous manufacturing

“Autonomous manufacturing requires ability to understand the present situation or predict the near term future and able to take decisions – that is what a human does in normal manufacturing. Artificial intelligence has capability to understand or predict market demand, predict supply chain failures leading to production loss and not able to meet the demand and accordingly optimise supply chain planning, predict machine failures and hence decide on re- routing of material flow. These capabilities of AI, powered by strong decision making capability at every stage, makes it the most adaptable technology for autonomous manufacturing,” asserts Dr Pradeep Chatterjee, Head – Digital Transformation, Change Management and Customer Experience at Global Delivery Centre, Tata Motors.

“Both artificial intelligence (AI) and autonomous manufacturing are very broad terms. There are many intricate layers in both of them,” explains Mahesha BR Pandit, Co-founder and CTO, Rhytify Technologies. “The four components of AI – the perception (enabled by machine vision and sensor networks), reasoning and planning (both enabled by the core algorithms and machine learning) and motion (enabled by robots) – could help realising the dream of fully autonomous manufacturing over time. But the AI would help full autonomy of manufacturing processes only if we have adequate quantity of high quality data about those processes,” he adds.

When it comes to Cloud Computing, there are trust issues. Are the fears exaggerated?

“Data is one of the most valuable assets for any company and with a fully autonomous manufacturing plant, safeguarding the data becomes extremely critical and important. I think the fear is more to do with someone getting access to the data in the cloud or someone getting access to a connected device/object inside a manufacturing plant (or an autonomous vehicle) and take control,” says Navveen Balani.

“The concerns are due to various reasons. The majority of cloud computing providers do not consider security as one of their most important responsibilities. Organisations that outsource to a cloud vendor often times make their choices based on price instead of security. Often this transition involves multiplying the number of IT admins with access to the company's data several-fold and without proper admin controls. This is really scary,” opines Pravin Bambal.

“There are many advantages with cloud computing but the issues that many are facing are the shared services that are being offered for many customers using the same infrastructure. Also the entire development and infrastructure is outsourced which the enterprises may not have direct control. The issue may be security issues like data theft in public cloud which acts a threat to the enterprises. These concerns are now handled and now it is safe to use cloud as the technology,” says Anand V emphatically.

Can blockchain reduce the inefficiencies in manufacturing operations, especially in the supply chain?

“Blockchain solutions integrate the entire value chain – sourcing, procurement, manufacturing, transportation and distribution and improve supply chain management and traceability can make a significant difference,” says Achyuta Ghosh. NASSCOM’s research highlights the growing adoption of enterprise blockchain solutions. Ghosh quotes the example of Apollo Hospitals’ collaboration with Oracle, Strides Pharma and NITI Aayog to build a blockchain based healthcare drug supply chain solution that will store drug details such as drug serial number, labelling and scanning details about manufacturers’ supply chain, which will track every hand change in the network, thus curbing fake medicine sales.

“Blockchain brings provenance tracking from source to destination, i.e., from the producer to the consumer. Blockchain reduces fraud in the system. It creates more trust with the consumers. The inventory management required for the manufacturing is optimised thereby reducing cost, we can define this as Block chain – Single source of truth for the manufacturing operations,” says Anand V.

But not everyone is so enthused. “Blockchain is not a holy grail – it is one of the most advanced technologies which is misunderstood because of the FOMO factor. There are inefficiencies in manufacturing operations due to errors or disruption of the service. Blockchain system may not be helpful in this case,” maintains Adnyesh Dalpati. Dr Pradeep Chatterjee concurs, saying, “Personally I feel most of the problems being addressed by blockchain can also be addressed by existing IT solutions, maybe handling it differently. Blockchain requires massive investments vis-à-vis traditional IT solutions. While blockchain might look to be more secured today, as the concept is new, few years down the line hackers might have a solution in place to hack such systems.”

“To what extent the blockchain could help you depends on the intensity with which you would like to govern your supply chain,” says Mahesha BR Pandit. For example, if you are a manufacturer of diamond ornaments or diamond tipped drilling equipment, then you might need to watch your supply chain intensely because a slip, mistake, misinterpretation, miscalculation, wrong entries, delays related to diamonds could adversely impact your operation, finances and reputation! If you are in such a business, yes, blockchain would help you,” he adds.

Is the pace of technology too overwhelming for most enterprises, especially MSMEs?

Pravin Bambal replies in the affirmative. “Technological obsolescence – keeping pace with new technology – has been the most critical challenge faced by the MSMEs. With so much technological transformation happening around, it is natural to feel overwhelmed – both as individuals and within organisations,” he says. “Yes, to some extent,” agrees Navveen Balani. “While technology exist, it is not yet readily available for consumption.” He adds.

Mahesha Pandit is of the opinion that the pace of technology is overwhelming for everyone – including MSMEs. On top of the inherent complexities of a technology, we are adding layers of our own misinterpretations and generalised thoughts and opinions, he feels. “To better understand a technology, we need real life case studies written – after the deployment of technologies and by the practitioners of technologies. Unfortunately such case studies are not written in all cases for many reasons including confidentiality,” he laments.

What should be the roadmap companies should follow in adopting these technologies?

“Adoption of technologies needs a mind-set change. When such products are adopted the employees need to go through a learning curve. This needs an openness of the employees to learn especially in manufacturing. It gets a little difficult since most of the workers and supervisors are working on equipment which has been there for years,” says Adnyesh Dalpati.

“Any organisation on its own will find it cost prohibitive to undertake the myriad of emerging technology experiments and applications. Hence I believe it is imperative for organisations to constantly look out for opportunities to build collaborative partnerships, source skilled talent and crowd source innovation – with industry players, start-ups, competitors, academia, etc.,” adds Achyuta Ghosh.

“I suggest companies should not chase technologies. Companies should have understanding of capabilities of the emerging technologies but choose to pick those, which can add value to the organisation. The roadmap should be prepared for organisational needs and emerging technologies being mapped against those needs,” sums up Dr Pradeep Chatterjee.

(Note: The responses of various experts featured in this story are their personal views and not necessarily of the companies or organisations they represent. The full interviews are hosted online at https://www.iedcommunications.com/interviews)