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Voice of Manufacturing 2nd Edition: Reviving Manufacturing With New Solutions & Technologies

May 27, 2020

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Change is buffeting and global manufacturing & supply chains continue to be impacted by the pandemic. Though the factories and plant owners are seeking to resume operations, they continue to face the regulatory uncertainties. To address these combinatorial problems, NASSCOM CoE IndDic (a unit of Industry 4.0) conducted its second edition of the “Voice of Manufacturing” webinar that entailed calibrating protocols for manufacturing, dodging the supply chain bottleneck and implication of emerging technologies enabling revival amidst the crisis.

The webinar had an engaging participation from the industrial front with the leaders sharing their agony on the post Covid-19 pain-points, reviving business & operations and the probable measures that could be taken for the business continuity. IndDic brought out key challenges from an industry adoption outlook segmenting into the ‘Convergence of solutions for New Normal’; How would Industry 4.0 address the disruption of global value chain and ‘Scaling solutions for New Normal’

The revival challenges pertained to developing in-house manufacturing. Few of the significant issues put across the audience was:

· Selection of market with respect to demand and economic crisis

· Reduced workforce & production capacity, including the crucial aspect of social distancing and employee safety measures

· Planning uncertainties in supply chain and sales operations that lead to cash liquidity. Inventory management and resuming production is of utmost importance

· Efficient production would also require a focus on Zero-defect/Quality monitoring

· In addition to the capabilities to be developed aligned with the BS-VI compliance

· While automation is taking the center stage at the industrial front, companies should be Industry 4.0 ready by adopting emerging technologies to solve the key problems

New Normal Road-map – However, the insights shared on embracing the ‘New Normal’ revolved around workplace health compliance, decoupling & reconnecting the supply chain, promotion of domestic manufacturing which would reduce the dependency on imports and build up a strategic resilience. Though there would be demand for qualified labour, automation & robotics will be seeded in domestic manufacturing. However, there would be a virtual shift with lot of employees working from home (Largely the non-shop floor-based employees). Hence, rapid adoption of remote diagnostic collaborative tools, substantial usage of data visualization through IIoT and AI- driven insights would be the crux of the new system.

Pacing towards Industry 4.0 – Rebooting post lockdown would drive adoption of digital solutions/platforms. Disruption to the ecosystem both at the individual and at the industrial level will foster innovation taking on Industry 4.0. Nevertheless, some of the key enablers in driving Industry 4.0 would be the MSMEs playing a vital role for domestic & exports and contributing to the larger industries. As mentioned earlier, the ‘Black Swan’ crisis would require an agile supply chain obtained through a clear approach to risk and management the process visibility. One of the important aspects is the increased demand of telecom and ecommerce due to Covid-19 piloting the adoption of Automation, Connectivity Intelligence, Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and Internet of Things (IoT)

Covid Impact Across the Manufacturing Value Chain – With Covid-19 disrupting global supply chains, there would be an immediate impact on the logistics, workforce availability and capacity utilization. The research perspective indicates unpredictable delays and variation in lead time, demand & supply capacity mismatch due to spikes and inadequate fulfillment capacity to meet the

demand. The impact was evaluated through polling questions concerning the manufacturing operations, India’s role in the formation of global supply chain strategy and intervention of technology solutions to overcome the shortfalls. This also identified the convergence of advanced technologies like IIoT, AI/ML, 3D Printing addressing the predictive maintenance, Zero-defect & Zero-effect, multi-skilled lean workforce model, fleet-tracking for real-time location tracing that are pivotal in the current industrial scenario.

Manufacturing dilemma and solutions for revival – To address the pitfalls of the pandemic, a coherent method of figuring the possible solutions were through holding forth to the 4M’s of manufacturing – Material, Machine, Manpower and Methods and inferring digital solutions by analyzing the challenges & opportunities. Positioning technologies like Digital Twins, AR/VR and shift from legacy to a more integrated digitized infrastructure to the core problems of quality, scalability, contactless workforce management were some of the insights gathered from the session.

The use cases with Paragon footwear implementing IoT to improve supply chain efficiency; Personal tracking solution for India’s largest railways network provider; JK Tyre integrating IoT and analytics to understand the complex manufacturing process were what helped the audience to understand the real-world problems and ways to fix it.

The webinar helped to understand how to customize solutions according to the defined problems that the manufacturers and organizations are facing now. This phase of the session will help to make dynamic decisions in response to rapidly changing circumstances and specific challenges that the industry is witnessing. While the Indian industry is in speculation, a well-charted framework can mitigate disputes in line to the new normal.


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