Industrial Automation Magazine India

Every organisation has to find its sweet spot and right transformation strategy

Published on : Friday 03-04-2020

Narendra Saini, Assistant Vice President – Technology and Services, Unlimit IoT Pvt Ltd.

How do you assess the current state of Indian industry in terms of modernisation?
Currently the Indian manufacturing industry is going through a major change. The maturity levels of Industrial Automation, adoption of Digital technologies, and use of modern tools for KPI improvements in the manufacturing sector can be observed; we can see organisations falling across the entire spectrum from entry to expert levels. While there seem to be a very few organisations at the entry level and only a few approaching the expert levels, the industry is largely in the middle of the bell curve. Most organisations seem to be experimenting with the ideas of digital transformation as perceived by their respective management team or the deputed consultants. There are plenty of projects under execution by these companies in the name of moving towards digitally enabled organisation, however I have not seen many organisations with enough clarity of their digital versions. I am hopeful that majority of these organisation will be able to set their transformation strategy right sooner or later.

What could be the reasons for the slow pace of modernisation of industry in general despite the availability of technology?
I am sure most industry experts would agree to the fact that Technology is just a mean, an enabler and not the end goal. The industry IT deployments are so heterogeneous that the new technology must work in tandem with the existing setup, which is not very straightforward. The most important is the role of management in laying down the practical goals for short, mid and long terms; time bound KPI targets in these three scenarios; product design aligned with the customer expectations and create an appropriate strategy towards achieving the KPI targets; both in terms of technology deployment and change management. Once this clarity is available, management must build a transformation strategy, and choose the right technology to achieve its goals.

Further, I may not fully agree to the statement that all the right tools & technologies are available as of now. If it were so, the industry will adopt to a proven technology, as it did in case of ERPs, PLMs, CRMs, and many other industry acknowledged tools that are popular in respective industry segments. Even though technology is available, the customisation or verticalisation of the tools has a long way to go. Technology development is a continuous process and unfortunately there is no standard tool or a proven single method available for this transformation. Every organisation has to find its sweet spot and right transformation strategy, either based on the integration of the currently deployed tools/systems and subsystems as part of their IT framework; or completely overhaul the IT strategy by adopting a new platform based approach, with each custom requirement to be developed on top of this platform in an ongoing manner.

This brings to the old quest of the Enterprise Integration. One of the standards ways to tackle it is to create a cross functional Business/Change management function within the organisation required to drive the transformation strategy. The organisations can benchmark themselves against the leading industry competitors in their respective segments to work towards achieving the continuous improvement year on year.

The automotive industry is a good example but the success is not replicated in, say textiles, where exports are not in line with the potential?
Let’s face the fact that the vertical industries in the manufacturing domain have their own capacity of investment. With higher capacity of investment, the automotive industry attracted best of the talents over the years, but there is still a long way to go for many of them. When it comes to non-automotive segment, certain high volume and process industries have also gone for enhanced levels of industrial automation in their manufacturing processes. There are a few examples of good verticalised implementations in various industry segments such as textiles, food & beverages, consumer goods, etc. Notwithstanding the fact that most of these industries are in the transformation stage and there are still plenty of things that would need to be done to stay competitive going forward, a widespread use of digital technologies is still a far-fetched dream. I would like to believe that there are more verticalised solutions available, and startups can really play a vital role here.

At the moment the renewable energy segment in India is growing, but so is the demand. What should be the ideal energy mix?
I wish if we could entirely depend on the renewable energy, but by the nature of its generation and understanding the T&C losses in transmission & distribution, it is not really possible in today’s scenario. I would like to believe that non-production energy can be obtained through the locally available renewable sources. Apart from this, long distance renewable energy sources such as Wind Farm or Solar Farm, should be promoted as well. The electricity generated in these power plants can be supplied to the grid and through the power exchange an equivalent amount of electricity can be consumed at the output with line charges to be paid to the transmission company towards services provided. Both of these models do exists but still not reached an optimal level. As of now we should target to reach a one third to 40% of the energy consumption from renewable sources by 2025.

What more can the government do to boost manufacturing in India with the vision for a USD 5 trillion economy by 2025?
The ‘Make in India’ program is a very good start by the government of India. However, if we look at the examples of other countries, the industry modernisation is also supported through low interest loans or government subsidies. Government  Having said this, government can also look at other innovative ways. To boost the export and quality of products, a special scheme can be launched for the companies whose export is 25% (for example) of its overall business. In such a scenario, the company may get additional subsidy against such loans or may be adjusted in the tax structure against such transformation projects. This will encourage companies to have increased focus on export markets as well. There is a possibility of a lot of innovation through which government can encourage the modernisation of the industry.

Is sustainable development a difficult goal to achieve for a growing economy like India?
There are arguments to support both ways. For an ecosystem that needs to support start-ups, the sustainability is defined in a whole different way than for the ecosystem that supports large conglomerates. A growing economy like India needs to support both of these ecosystems at the same time.

It is important to understand that the sustainable development stems from the leadership thought process and how the top management sets the vision. The sustainable development is not difficult to achieve if the business leaders are sensitive towards it. I can quote examples of Tata, Mahindra, L&T, Birla groups, Infosys and Wipro just to name a few. These businesses have been able to grow sustainably over the years within their own definition of sustainable ecosystem, through the partners, communities and employees. It may not be entirely right to say that sustainable development is not easy to achieve in the growing economies.

Conclusion
The Indian industry is at a cusp of moving from conventional manufacturing to advance manufacturing facilities and systems. While IT and OT merger is a big challenge, most of the technology advancement lies in the IT domain while this will have a medium to large scale impact on the processes, and OT will be impacted through process reengineering or redesigning in some cases. The IT + OT confluence is better known as Industry 4.0 as we know it. In India most organisation would lie in the bulge of Industry 2.5 to 3.5 on the maturity curve while a few on both sides of the bell curve.

Some of the key ingredients of industry transformation – capital availability, management direction, business critical KPIs, IT + OT strategy, the customer expectation with product innovation, organisation wide integration for the respective businesses, and the availability of the right talent will play the important role towards the organisation transformation and change management. This is critical to the industry growth and sooner or later, the businesses need to identify this; deploy right consultants/internal talent and develop their strategy to lead their leagues.

(The views expressed in interviews are personal, not necessarily of the organisations represented)
Narendra Saini is Assistant Vice President – Technology and Services with Unlimit IoT Pvt Ltd and is responsible for Product Management, R&D and Delivery Teams. He is a competent professional with 20+years of progressive experience, Digital Strategist, Transformation Leader, and Evangelist in IoT/IIoT & Digital Technologies, Strategy, and Innovation. He brings excellent mix of experience from Products & Services organisations; P&L, Technology, Business Development and People Management; coupled with entrepreneurial background, with experience in Digital Transformation, Smart Manufacturing/Industry4.0, Connected Vehicle, Supply Chain & logistics, Customer experience, Data Analytics/Monetisation, and Enterprise Integration. An acclaimed industry speaker at international forums; he had held workshops for business leaders including CXOs globally on these subjects.

Mr Saini brings experience of successful change management, recruiting & mentoring/coaching team members from IITs/IIMs and building highly productive teams. He has led Digital Enablement initiatives, including & not limited to Cloud, ML/DL, RPA, Predictive, AR/VR, Datalake, Blockchain, Digital Twins, Information Security, Embedded Hardware and Open Source Tech and Industrial Platform Architectures such as CVP, ITP & DFP. He had conducted Digital Transformation & Industry4.0 workshops globally; delivered Target State Architecture & Digital Roadmap, with Digital framework of Future Factories & Product Innovation.

Prior to joining Unlimit, he has worked with Tata group, been part of several emerging technology startups at different stages of their maturity, led Cross Functional Team towards joint value proposition for ERP/PLM/MES/CRM /Digital Thread for Enterprise Value chain integration. He led his company Sukrut Systems in winning RED HERRING ASIA 100 & UK Sankalp Smrithi & mBillionth (South East Asia) amongst other accolades. He has chaired the Telecom Standards Development Society of India (TSDSI) & Telecommunication Engineering Centre WG for IoT in Smart Governance. Mr Saini advises & mentors entrepreneurs and startups and is a member of Board of Advisors in a few. Mr Saini holds dual Masters with Master of Technology from IIT Delhi and Master of Science in Physics from IIT Roorkee. He was shortlisted in top 50 Innovators in India by Department of Science & Technology (DST) & FICCI. He is active in Socio-economic reforms of under-privileged, rural education & active against Female Foeticide & gender discrimination

#April 2020 Magazine Cover Story

Transforming the Industry. Experts debate the factors that are holding back the Indian industry in quest of modernisation, and improved productivity. Digital Transformation is the buzzword for industry in the wake of the Fourth Industrial Revolution or Industry 4.0. Like much of India with various States at different stages of development, the Indian industry too is not a uniform entity in terms of modernisation and technology. The automotive industry is perhaps the most automated and leading on the digital transformation front as well, but many other segments, especially the MSME component that forms the largest chunk, are still at various stages of modernisation. To read the full cover story Please click here