Industrial Automation Magazine India

M2M connectivity is the basic infrastructure that every plant should have

Published on : Tuesday 03-01-2023

Amit Saluja, Senior Director and Centre Head, NASSCOM CoE, Gandhinagar.
Do you feel that India has finally caught up in deployment of automatic machines and processes at all levels of Industry? Which areas are we ahead of and where are we lagging?

Automation in manufacturing has happened across industrial sectors. This is not just restricted to large enterprises; even SMEs are using high-end equipment in their manufacturing processes. I had the opportunity to visit 50+ plants in the last one year and nowhere had I felt automation level is below global benchmarks. I will go a step further, some manufacturers have even developed in-house teams for mechanical automation – there are a lot of ‘jugaads’ happening in plants. In every plant I visited, I could see a good mix of standard equipment and special purpose machines.
 
While I say that we are doing good doesn’t mean that we are top notch, there are still enough opportunities to take automation to the next level. In the current situation we have the majority of core repetitive production processes automated, but in support processes like material movement and packaging, there is a lot to be done. This is where large enterprises and SMEs get differentiated. Large manufactures have partially automated their support processes but in SMEs it is very low which makes the production still human dependent. We have done the right thing in automating processes that demand high level skills; let’s also move forward to bring in machines that can ease out the labour work. This doesn’t mean we reduce labour, we still will need people to run the machines, collect data, review dashboards and make decisions.
 
Manufacturing has operated for a long time in silos of the verticals. Smart Manufacturing actually tries to change this idea towards networking and collaboration. What are the big stumbling blocks in M2M communication and also sharing of data between departments?
Silo operation in manufacturing is a huge challenge. While we have embraced automation, on digitalisation we are still lagging and the reason for this is lack of machine to machine and machine to human connectivity. In the plants we have a lot of old legacy machines that do not provide options of exporting data but at the same time where the machines have capabilities to give data, we are not good enough in getting regular data and analysing it.
 
There are lots of examples of enterprises leading with smart manufacturing practices through online data acquisition, analysis and real time decision making but the percentage of these manufacturers is still low and consists primarily of global organisations. We see a lot of companies who are somewhere in the middle where they are getting machine data but most of the data is just sitting in the system with no real value coming out of it.
 
Having M2M connectivity is the basic infrastructure that every plant should have, even for legacy systems there are options available to retrofit sensors that can give some level of essential data. What we need is focus to have this digital infrastructure in place and the right partner who can analyse the current machine setup and connectivity to give an optimum solution.
 
In Smart Manufacturing, two topics find frequent mention. The first is OEE – which can be measured by through-put or capacity utilisation. The second topic is Quality. Is the emphasis same for different types of manufacturing?
This question is like asking what is important to live – food or water. OEE and Quality, both are must for plant operations. All plants have processes in place to assess the OEE and quality but the challenge is as of now most of them, especially SMEs, have manual setup to monitor. We see manual measurements done on paper to record the number of parts produced, break down time, setup or change over time and quality inspection is being done visually by humans. This doesn’t help if we have to analyse the data over long term to get insights on what, when and why issues happened. For quality inspection, imagine a worker checking thousands of parts every day, there will be chances of missing out defects due to fatigue, skill or environmental condition issues.
 
Digitising these processes of OEE assessment and quality inspection should not be considered as a cost, these are essential in today’s world where production per day has increased tremendously; we have a skilled workforce shortage and can’t afford to have breakdowns and customers reporting defects. Any right operational decision taken based on OEE analysis will cover up the cost to deploy it.
 
Many manufacturing industries have a machine shop at the core for generating structures and products. There are new technologies for metal cutting like lasers, water jets, etc. How does this affect the traditional machine tools industry? Secondly, would additive manufacturing make a mainstream impact or stay restricted to rapid prototyping?
This is a very industry and manufacturing product specific decision. Both traditional machines and high end metal cutting will exist and will depend upon the part to be manufactured, its complexity, precision level need, volume and time to produce. In the precision industry we see mixed use of these machines and depending upon the customer order, manufacturers decide what to use for machining and cutting operations. With increasing production volumes and complexity, the use of high-end new technologies will increase but traditional machines are still not going from plants anytime soon. SMEs still will depend on these considering they cannot scale so fast.
 
Additive manufacturing is catching up, especially for tooling, which is complex.  But considering the initial investment cost is high for metal part production, applications are limited. While as of now its usage is a lot more for rapid prototyping but seeing the transformation that’s happening in manufacturing, the adoption of additive manufacturing will increase in the near term.
 
Industry 4.0 brings with it the concept of small batch size manufacturing to cater for a wide range of product spectrum. Traditional machine tools are geared for large volume high speed production and not so well suited for short production runs. What will change?
We are living in a VUCA world with uncertainty of highest order, gone are the days where we can assume production volume and orders will remain constant. We are seeing lots of spikes and bottoms in demand which is creating flexible manufacturing as the most critical capability to have. So we need to have abilities in plants to change production schedules and even use the same lines for multiple kinds of products. Industry 4.0 will not be a deterrent to large volume production; it only gives us flexibility to add short production in our capabilities. Machines giving us operational data and dashboard will only make us much more confident of changes to be made when we have new constraints. In the plants we have such a large number of tooling inventory which becomes difficult to track and this is where inventory management Industry 4.0 solutions can be a great help. Manufacturers can’t avoid working with limited tools, so building capabilities to manufacture tools fast and managing the inventory well will always make them ready for future uncertainties.
 
Are the concepts of Smart Manufacturing predominant in private industry? Do they equally apply for public sector manufacturers? Do large companies actually nudge their vendors to imbibe these concepts and technologies?
Absolutely not, smart manufacturing concepts are relevant to any plant, private or public, large or medium or small. This is just about enabling machines and humans to talk to each other using data as the language and then have built-in intelligence to make the right decisions at the right time. This is something which will help every plant, irrespective of the size and how it is managed. We have enough examples of effective use of smart manufacturing solutions in public sector manufacturing plants. There is a good level of awareness that exists today on the benefits of Industry 4.0. The challenges are always how to go about it. While many large companies have dedicated digital teams and structure in place, still many are discussing how to build a roadmap and the RoI calculations for every solution.
 
I have seen many large companies talking about digitising processes to their vendors and it is working. These vendors were thinking about it, but when the demand comes from their customers, they take it a lot more seriously. Two areas where vendors have started adoption are the supply chain systems and quality inspection as these applications have direct impact on effective working between large companies and suppliers.
 
While I am positive on this, at the same time we also need to give a greater push to have these conversations with their vendors. Enterprise and vendor collaborations on digitisation will take our manufacturing practices to a much higher level and this is extremely critical for Atmanirbhar Bharat.
 
What is the role NASSCOM is performing to accelerate adoption of smart manufacturing solutions in India? Are there specific programs for different segments of companies?
NASSCOM has set up a Center of Excellence at Gandhinagar with support from the Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology and Government of Gujarat to build a collaborative ecosystem for manufacturing digitisation in India. We have multiple programs for the large manufacturing and the SME organisations to support them on building digital capabilities in the organisation and adopt low cost and easy to deploy solutions from startups.
 
Manufacturing Innovation Challenge is a flagship initiative running for the last two years where large enterprises give us their complex use cases for which they are looking for solutions and we help them in finding top solution providers who have innovative ideas for the use case. Smart Manufacturing Forum is a focused initiative for the SME companies having revenues less than 1000 crore who are looking for help to define and implement a digital program in their organisation. Manufacturing companies can reach out to us at: [email protected] to know more about these programs.
 
Amit Saluja is Senior Director and Head of NASSCOM center at Gandhinagar. In addition to NASSCOM, Amit has held leadership positions at IBM, General Electric, and RPG Transmission in a career spanning over 25 years. Having worked with industrial and technology companies in multiple domains, Amit has gained a rich and diverse experience in using digital technologies such as AI, Cloud, Analytics, and IoT to usher in greater efficiencies in manufacturing and driving business growth. He is a firm believer in making optimum use of technology for transforming internal business processes.
 
Amit is a certified Lean Six Sigma Black Belt and expert in devising Design Thinking methodology for building technology roadmaps. He is also a certified Smart Industry Readiness Index Assessor and trained to evaluate enterprises on digital maturity and advice for manufacturing transformation journey.
 
Amit mentors Manufacturing Enterprises and startups on business strategy, process improvement and building technology roadmap.
 
(The views expressed in interviews are personal, not necessarily of the organisations represented)