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COVER STORY

Indian Manufacturing Has To Be Selective In Tech AdoptionI t is important to recognise that a major

shift has taken place in the manufacturing sector from a focus on mass production to mass customisation. It is not a shift in the

process of manufacturing, but it is the process of evolving a business model influenced by the customer. The customer has a big say in how a product or service is getting designed and delivered.Automotive manufacturing has been in the forefront of the Quality Revolution – TPM, Six Sigma, ISO / IATF Quality Management Systems, Zero Defect etc. These methodologies have numerous layers of data that are captured, assimilated and processed many times through localised software outside the ERP systems. The customer base has suddenly increased multi-fold in the Asian market, led by China and India, while the markets in the West and in Japan and South Korea, have led with newer, exotic functionality and comfort in the automobile.

Opportunities Practices in Innovation and Marketing, Design Thinking, User Experience, Concept Engineering, and Blue Ocean Strategy, require accurate and precise capturing of Facts, Thoughts, Words, and Images, followed

by translation into Function, and Quality Requirement. All these need to be shared concurrently with stakeholders, in digitalized form, for speedy processing. Only then evolution of a New Value Product or Service will take place.

Practices in manufacturing with focus on real time auto correction of process and product parameters, demand collection, assimilation, analysis and decision-making at speeds way beyond the capability of humans and typical office software. The unchanging facet of manufacturing – especially in the act of producing a component, part, assembly or an entire system – has been the pursuit of identifying variance from set standards and taking actions identified as disposal, correction and prevention. All these by human beings, qualified as engineers, statisticians, analysts. The need of the hour is speed in real time. The changing face of manufacturing is in the ‘HOW differently’ of the continuing pursuit of perfection through culture of excellence. This requires Information Technology, Computing Technology and Artificial Intelligence.

Challenges Three big challenges have to be dealt with, before jumping into the ocean of Industry 4.0

Sunil Kaul

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and AI. Firstly, recognising that manufacturing is not just producing components and parts, assembling them into aggregates, and finally into a finished saleable useable product, for the consumer. It is beyond developing a supply chain of raw materials, intermediate materials and products. This requires the ability to see the manufactured product as going through a series of processes, which have business processes like understanding the unmet unarticulated need of a series of customers, operations of a business and the typical production or manufacturing process on a shop floor.

Realising by self-discovery, that in an organisation there are assets, resources, processes, standards, customers, suppliers, and these need to be linked seamlessly; and imagining that we have upgraded to using ERP, JIT Systems, SCADA, RFID, HMI, and hence we are IoT-ready may be misleading. Each of them is a part in the whole system, which when integrated together with a concept based on a top down approach, will deliver a system that is agile, responsive and super- efficient, at a level we have not experienced yet.

In other words, we need to develop the skill of making visible the value stream in the business, end-to-end, comprising product innovation, business planning, resource and supply chain planning, or production on shop floor, logistics, operations management, all connected digitally with ability to speak to each other.

Secondly, very closely related to the above is skill and behaviour. It is primarily in the soft

part beyond the technology and tools. It is a combination of ‘mindset and teamsmanship’ – resistance to change. There continues the difficulty in getting into the other person’s shoe to appreciate, understand and accept that there are internal customers, and each customer in the manufacturing value chain has a need – either specified, unmet or even unarticulated. The matter of ‘I know my job better than anyone else’ and ‘someone out there is making a mistake’ results into a degenerative argument and not a generative conversation.

The questions that do not get addressed in a reflective or introspective spirit include: to what

extent, have we leveraged the full power and capability of ERP to get efficiencies – FIFO, traceablity, consumption-based manufacturing or Heijun’ka or lean, change management, training for skill development and talent management; and to what extent an objective for an ERP system, a CAE platform or a CRM software or a new initiative is clearly defined, structured and rolled out with tracking results, rather than as a fashion.

The third is something that is organisational leadership-centric. Any new knowledge-assimilation and culture-building initiative has to be led by the leader – doing and demonstrating. This is key, so that the message goes out strong and clear – ‘Only This Way.’ The approach has to be one of visible learning, experimenting and adapting by the leadership team, rather than delegating it to a small group of the so-called intelligent professionals and breaking the myth that once you have an ERP system, you can roll out an Industry 4.0 process.

Thus, I believe that in the Indian context Industry 4.0 can be deployed across manufacturing only in pockets. Manufacturing has a long supply chain unique to India.

DisruptionDisruption is required. It creates opportunities for breakthrough. One can improve incrementally only so much. From competing within a protected economy, to an open globally competitive economy, there is a distinct quantum leap, requiring new capabilities, mindset and organisational

environment. It has started happening in islands of excellence. It shall soon become a norm in the manufacturing

industry. There is a THREAT, that conventional manufacturing, with

manually-run initiatives of excellence, will become uncompetitive and

eventually close down. If disruption is not embraced as a strategic ‘next step-jump,’

manufacturing businesses and units will be forced to shut down, sooner than later.

RevolutionQuantum change in productivity in manufacturing operations and the shifting work processes will threaten the workforce with the current skill set. It is known that job creation during the past decade has been in value-added products and services. One should recognise that without the intervention of a human being, during conceptualisation, designing, prototyping and validation, it is very difficult for anything new to emerge. Machine-learning is something that will be useful very much in the areas of a manufacturing process which transforms the state of a material from before to the next to deliver defect-free products at the end of each process.

Practices in Innovation and Marketing, Design Thinking, User

Experience, Concept Engineering, and Blue Ocean Strategy, require

accurate and precise capturing of Facts, Thoughts, Words, and

Images, followed by translation into Function, and Quality Requirement.

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Job creation will be in areas of technology adaptation, implementation and maintenance functions. Education and vocation will need to be re-defined.

The areas where the workforce will have opportunities to leverage the change can be in developing the skill of depicting and documenting the flow of every process whether business (non-production) or production. This will bring about the maturity of the concept of internal customer and supplier. In the language of thermodynamics, it could be described as ‘The Input – The Work – The Output.’ This would be applicable to all types of businesses – consumer goods, FMCG, automotive, engineering, etc.

Secondly, workforce in the areas of non-traditional manufacturing: office processes, other than the shop floor, will need skills of observing, interviewing, dialoguing, hypothesis model making, scenario analytics rather than being comfortable with ERP systems and Data Analytics at individual level.

Thirdly, workforce in the areas of traditional manufacturing: shop floor personnel will need skills in the areas of

operating and maintenance of electrical, electronics, mechatronics, robotics, change management, environmental, health and safety engineering.

The pace at which societal changes are driven by technology, demands new specialisation at 10X speed to be relevant in the future. Specialisation would be essential in the areas of big data analytics, mechatronics, value stream mapping, machine and tool designing, robotics, low cost automation. A big thrust is also required in areas of ‘Thinking Out-of-The Box, Challenging Past and Current Practices, Learning from Unrelated Industry and Quick Prototyping’ to demonstrate new concepts.

The new concepts that need to be evolved, will demand a change in the role of HR in manufacturing organisations. The HRD and HRM functions have a very pivotal role to play, by working up crisp strategies that enable and facilitate skilling, talent acquisition and talent retention. These can be addressed by actions of identifying the changing needs of the organisation by interviewing promoter group, CEO and different functional leaders; evolving industry-academia collaboration;

becoming enablers and coaches to help transformation of the workforce, more so on the group that needs to take a quantum

leap in the journey of re-skilling.

(Sunil Kaul is Member, ANAND Executive Committee, Group President, Excellence in

Manufacturing, Innovation & Technology)

COVER STORY

In the Indian context Industry 4.0 can be deployed across

manufacturing only in pockets. Manufacturing has a long supply

chain unique to India.