Industrial Automation Magazine India

The lockdown brought to the fore remote working capability

Published on : Friday 01-07-2022

Bob Gill, General Manager, Southeast Asia, ARC Advisory Group. 

The pandemic is nearly behind us, but the effects on industry will last longer. What are three digitalisation strategies that companies are working on based on lessons of the last two years?
The travel restrictions and social distancing resulting from Covid-19 made it much more difficult for companies to get workers trained on actual physical equipment and production processes. As such, there was and has since been greater interest in the use and adoption of virtual reality-based training solutions. These give plant personnel simulated hands-on experience on equipment operations and proper procedures before they enter the actual physical environment, including, for example, potentially hazardous plant areas.
 
The lockdowns and movement restrictions we experienced really brought to the fore remote working capability enabled by digital connectivity, which enabled companies to function in a way they could not have done earlier. Had Covid happened in 2000 instead of 2020; the economic impact would have been much more devastating. In the industrial environment, connected workers are increasingly able to remotely access OT systems and IoT devices on the plant floor; access supplier internet resources to get software upgrades; and can engage real-time with subject matter experts who may be in a competence centre located far away in a different continent.
 
The Covid crisis, with its disruption to conventional production operations, also saw the rise in popularity of 3D printing as a rapid fabrication method. In Singapore, for example, the urgent need for plastic face masks for hospital workers was fulfilled by using an additive manufacturing approach involving multiple partners, including Siemens, which accelerated production of these items. Increasingly, 3D printing is moving away from a previous focus on prototyping to volume production of parts.      
 
For so many Indian companies who are not fully into Industrial Revolution 3.0, is there any urgency to move towards digitalisation?
Digital technologies for industrial use are becoming increasingly available and affordable. Tangible improvements in production efficiency and quality and in areas such as plant safety and energy consumption can be made without huge outlays in expenditure. In addition, the young tech-savvy workforce increasingly expects to see and work with technology such as mobile devices and cloud applications that they are increasingly familiar with in their home and personal lives. They will hence favour companies that are enlightened to want to move towards digitalisation.   
 
For many companies, the challenge is in moving from pilots to deployment at scale. What is the way forward?
At ARC, we advise that pilots should not be discrete, disconnected activities but should fit into an overall digital transformation strategy. So, at the outset it is important that companies determine what resources are needed to execute not only a use-case pilot but also to scale the solution. Often, failure to move beyond pilots occurs because of an approach that is too technology-centric and does not take into consideration organisational issues such as required changes in work processes and in job roles.   
 
There is so much work going on in the area of Data Analytics. What about the effort to get real-time data directly from machines?
Many niche and custom solutions are being attempted for connecting legacy machines, what about long term serviceability?
A good example here is MTConnect, the open, royalty-free protocol, which delivers plug-and-play connectivity for machine tools by enabling equipment to provide data in structured, contextualised and no longer proprietary. As such it enables automated, real-time data collection and much greater visibility into machinery operations. The data can then be consumed by a software application for machine monitoring (utilisation, OEE), job scheduling, process analytics, predictive maintenance, etc.
 
Digital transformation is deemed to be necessary for companies to become part of the big global supply chains. Are there already such requirements by big buyers as a condition to become their suppliers?
Companies will certainly favour suppliers that have undergone a sufficient level of digitalisation to be able to share and integrate their data and thus increase the utility of the buyer companies’ own systems and enable business efficiency improvements
 
How could Digital Transformation help companies to cope with the supply constraints of recent origin – for example electronic chips, for example other shortages arising out of political events in Europe?
These shortages of recent origin do highlight that global supply chains primarily configured for cost efficiency rather than resilience are susceptible to disruptive events. This makes it very important that companies have a high level of supply chain visibility so they can get early warning of supply interruptions and take remedial action such as switching sourcing. Deep supply chain visibility is achieved when processes are digitised and systems connected.
 
Bob Gill, General Manager, Southeast Asia, ARC Advisory Group. Bob Gill is responsible for managing ARC's business operations and market research activities in Southeast Asia. He is also a frequent speaker at company and industry events in Singapore and Southeast Asia.
 
(The views expressed in interviews are personal, not necessarily of the organisations represented)