Industrial Automation Magazine India

Integration of automation and digitalisation can be achieved in baby steps

Published on : Tuesday 01-06-2021

Bhaskar Mandal, Head, Digital Industries, Siemens Limited.

Will smart factories result in fewer jobs or will it create jobs, which sector do you see digital trend picking up in India and Global?
Digitalisation will secure competitiveness and jobs – everywhere. And it will make life easier for both blue-collar and white collar workers. We proved that in our own plant in Kalwa near Mumbai. The digitalised factory is proof of how adopting digitalisation will help Indian industry, especially small and medium enterprises (SMEs), achieve manufacturing excellence. This factory has reduced cycle time from 22 seconds to 9 seconds, increased quality checks from 22 to 68 parameters across 3 times the number of variants. We did not have to reduce the employees on the shop floor despite this digital transformation. Even in our factory in Amberg, Germany, in around 30 years the production volume has now increased fifteen fold – as well as the complexity: from 300 to over 1,200 product variants, 1 product per second, 15 million products per year. But it always had a consistent number of employees (always approx 1000) and the same production area.
 
Speaking of new technologies, e.g., Artificial Intelligence: AI will not replace human labour. Rather, AI will remain a supplementary function for a fruitful collaboration of humans and machines. The goal is to assess which tasks can be automated, and which require human intervention. People are and will be your most important resource and giving them the tools they need to do their jobs safely and effectively is a main advantage of AI. We need to leverage the data generated so humans can manage unforeseen events in almost-real time, such as unplanned machine breakdown. AI will make our work more productive, less vulnerable to error and provide more time for creative work by automating simple tasks.
 
What are hindrances as a leading digitalisation provider you have to face?       

We are going through a rapid pace of social, environmental and technology changes. So, the obvious questions are always around where does one start their digitalisation journey? How much to invest? Will this be sustainable, etc? But we tell our customers to focus on the ‘reasons for investment’ first before we get into discussion of ‘return on investment’. Technology will keep evolving and an enterprise will have to design a blueprint and define milestones with respect to how flexibly they can integrate this into their design and manufacturing cycle. The good part is that the integration of automation and digitalisation can be achieved in baby steps starting with the lowest hanging fruits and then, improved returns can fund continuous investments. In short, the technology will pay for itself and more. With the Digital Enterprise Portfolio, we are perfectly positioned to address the digital end-to-end integration and vertical integration for enterprises of all sizes. 
 
In India, while some of the large businesses have been quick to transition into this digital world, the majority of the Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) in the manufacturing sector are yet to put these digital technologies to work. Currently, availability of finance is one of the major challenges that Indian SMEs are facing. The other challenge is equally serious. While several SMEs are advanced in their processes and have made decent headway with respect to digitalisation, they lack a skilled workforce. 
 
So, it is our endeavour to work together with the customer in his or her industry consumer journey. And that’s the digital enterprise we’re talking about.
 
With the advent of technology how is Siemens focusing on new skill sets?         
The availability of trained and industry relevant technical talent is an imperative ingredient for India’s growth story. A mind-set and culture of continuous learning has been adopted across the hierarchy and functions. Harnessing the power of learning and development, we have empowered people to take ownership of their careers and seize the learning opportunities.