Accelerating Digital Transformation
Published on : Monday 04-07-2022
A recent analysis of the Indian mobile phone industry by Frost and Sullivan shows how rising internet penetration and falling smartphone prices are fuelling the sectors growth.
With the government's Production-Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme helping mobile manufacturing companies increase their year-on-year sales, India is currently the second-largest exporting nation for mobile phones and is fast becoming a global manufacturing hub. A research study by the National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM), in collaboration with Capgemini on the adoption of Industry 4.0 in India’s manufacturing sector released in March this year has some interesting revelations. The gist of the report is that Industry 4.0 adoption in India can help the manufacturing sector meet national growth targets and contribute 25% to GDP by FY26, the original target envisioned by the Make in India policy unveiled in 2014. Yet another research report, unveiled last week by BloombergNEF (BNEF), states how India will require US $223 billion of investment in order to meet its goal of wind and solar capacity installations by 2030.
Together, these three reports indicate the potential as well as the challenges before the country. As the benefits of policy initiatives begin to accrue, the manufacturing sector is slowly but surely gathering the much needed momentum, as confirmed by the Index of Industrial Production (IIP) data released in early June by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation. At 7.1 percent, the April industrial growth rate is the highest in eight months, which comes back on the previous month’s data that had indicated an 8.4 percent growth in the eight core sectors. Maintaining this pace of growth needs not only more and more investments, but also technology, and the willingness to adopt it rapidly. The major manufacturing economies of the world like Germany, Japan, Taiwan, Korea and China have shown the way and if India has to emulate their success, it has to follow the methodology. The Cover Story in this edition of Industrial Automation on the theme of digital transformation examines some of the issues at stake.
Industrial exhibitions are the right places to find the latest technologies. After a two-year pandemic induced hiatus, Automation Expo is back in the physical format next month, from August 16-19, 2022, at the usual venue – the Bombay Exhibition Complex at Goregaon, Mumbai. It is advances in science and technology that enabled the world to successfully battle the deadly Covid-19 virus over the past 30 months, and also in the process stepped up the process of digitalisation. Having realised the pitfalls, manufacturing companies now need to embrace wholeheartedly the tools Industry 4.0 has brought to them, and participate in the India growth story.
