Industrial Automation Magazine India

Additive manufacturing is an evolving field, and its progressing very rapidly

Published on : Wednesday 04-01-2023

Utpal Chakraborty is Chief Digital Officer at Allied Digital Services Ltd. 
Do you feel that India has finally caught up in deployment of automatic machines and processes at all levels of Industry? Which verticals are ahead and which are lagging?
 

If we talk about automation in manufacturing specifically, the manufacturing industry in India has been thriving towards bringing automation in various areas since long. Of course, they have been selective and opted only for those options that make sense and bring real value. Because whenever we talk about any automation or deploying automatic machines, the cost vs. value is something obvious that needs to be answered. Also, factors like demand and market size also cannot be ignored while considering such options. 
 
It will be very difficult to say which industry is ahead and which is behind, because it's very contextual. But probably in Automotive, Electronics and Pharmaceuticals it's visible because they just need it and cannot avoid to survive in the competition. But I feel, there is a huge scope in FMCG, Construction, Healthcare and many more. Also, Additive Manufacturing using 3D printing technology is going to be a game changer in another couple of years. I am sure India is going to take advantage of this opportunity.  
 
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?
The whole concept of Industry 4.0 is around connected devices, connected factories and bringing intelligence and optimisation on top of that. To achieve sharing of information between two or more separate devices or vertices at large brings some number of challenges. From a technical standpoint, requirement of an infrastructure wherein the data and information exchange can happen, transformation of different varieties of data takes place, correlation of such information is possible and some meaningful inference can be drawn. The other things include data security, it could also be data privacy, it could also be subject to regulatory and compliance boundaries. 
 
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?
Additive manufacturing is an evolving field, and it's progressing very rapidly. It has already progressed beyond rapid prototyping and has already paved its way into mainstream. I am sure the technology matures, and the cost factor comes down, there will be huge adoption in many areas.  

Utpal Chakraborty is Chief Digital Officer at Allied Digital Services Ltd. A former Head of Artificial Intelligence at YES Bank, he is an eminent AI, Quantum and Data Scientist, AI researcher and Strategist, having 21 years of industry experience, including working as Principal Architect in L&T Infotech, IBM, Capgemini and other MNCs in his past assignments. Utpal is a well-known researcher, writer and speaker on Artificial Intelligence, IoT, Agile & Lean at conferences around the world. 
 
His recent research on machine learning titled “Layered Approximation for Deep Neural Networks” has been appreciated in different premier conferences, institutions, and universities.

(The views expressed in interviews are personal, not necessarily of the organisations represented)