Building Indian Manufacturing to be Globally Competitive through Innovation and Technology, organised by CII is being held from 6-9 July 2021 in Virtual mode.
The theme of one of the sessions, “RPA, AI and Machine learning – Implement the right technologies and automation opportunities for reducing costs and improving productivity was moderated by Dr. Jitendra K. Das, Director, FORE School of Management, New Delhi. His fellow panelists were – Mr. Govind Singh Executive Director & Group CIO, Dalmia Bharat Limited; Mr. Jagdish Ramaswamy President & Chief Digital Officer, Hindalco Industries Limited; Mr. Sivaganesh Vellingiri National Head Factory Automation, Fanuc India and Mr. Sharad Nigam Vice President – Corporate Strategy and Digital Operations, India Hitachi.
Dr. Jitendra K. Das, who did his B.Tech & M.Tech from IIT Delhi and has been with manufacturing industries like Shriram Chemical and Wipro Infotech before joining IIMs as a faculty, chaired the session and deliberated the way forward towards adaptation and implementation of Robotics Process Automation (RPA), Artificial Information (AI) and Machine Learning (ML).
Dr. Das stressed upon the criticality of the implementation of the right technology and automation opportunity to reduce cost and improve productivity. He said with the national target of achieving the 5 trillion dollar economy the total contribution of the manufacturing sector in GDP must cross 1 trillion dollar. Which also means that the entire consumption cannot happen in India, manufactured goods have to be exported. And the only way to be competitive in the international market India has to focus on enhancing production and reducing production cost. And for that to happen the only way forward is to adopt technologies. Since the entire consumption cannot happen in India to achieve that target, export has to happen. We need to be internationally competitive and so the cost of production goes down and capacity of production must go up.
The way we do business, the way we interact with people & offices, the way we transact and negotiate will all change drastically as Artificial Intelligence is moving in a new direction. A lot of intelligent inputs will be introduced in the discussion held between two individuals or parties, with GPT 3 coming in”, said Dr Das.the way we interact with people at offices, the way we transact and negotiate, will all change drastically as AI makes an entry. GPT or Generative Pre-trained Transformer is a machine learning software, where the system is trained to do the prediction and provide insights.
Mr. Govind Singh, Executive Director & Group CIO, Dalmia Bharat Limited said that RPA is something which is extremely critical in the current context and it is not just limited to the manufacturing industry. Any kind of industry like retail, FMCG and others will benefit as it shall help in minimising a lot of mundane work in manufacturing units. Procurement, forecasting of sales and overall supply chain can be optimised which essentially would make the productive unit more efficient. Organisations can reduce the cost, maintenance and the downtime and sky is the limit.
Mr. Jagdish Ramaswamy, President & Chief Digital Officer, Hindalco Industries Limited, referred to RPA and AI which would really bring in quantum change in all sectors. The future is moving towards intelligent automation where 80% would be knowledge driven and 20% computers.
Mr. Sivaganesh Vellingiri, National Head Factory Automation, Fanuc India highlighted the importance of the tech driven processes by quoting a 2000 years old poem of an ancient tamil poet which roughly translated says, “wisdom needs to be tuned with the mode of the changing world”. Technological innovation has to happen for India to be a manufacturing hub and focus has to be on expansion of the business at an international level, he said. Data collated has to be immediately interpreted for decision making to happen, he added.
Mr. Sharad Nigam, Vice President – Corporate Strategy and Digital Operations, India Hitachi, shared glimpses of advanced technological intervention by Hitachi for clients or internal purposes and demonstrated the power of APC and AI technologies which are being made available for India manufacturing sectors.
