No country in the history of the world has grown rich without its manufacturing sector taking it to the level where services can take a bigger role in sustaining prosperity. This happened with Britain, Germany, USA, Japan, South Korea, China and many more.

Indian manufacturing can TRANSFORM itself and become highly competitive in India and in the global markets. But wishful thinking will not make it happen. What is needed is ‘Clarity of Thought & Decisiveness of Action’.

In our humble view, the biggest problem of Indian Manufacturing is poor skills of the workforce in machine shops. This includes operators, inspectors, supervisors & engineers. This results in huge waste/losses.

While ‘up-skilling’ is a laudable objective and must be pursued with full vigour, it is MOST important to introduce technologies that reduce the dependence on human skill in the THREE vital areas of manufacturing:

– Production

– Quality

– Machine Health

Let us look at the most effective technologies to reduce human dependence in these three areas:

1. PRODUCTION:

·CLOUD BASED MACHINE MONITORING allows seamless transfer of operational data of machines to cloud based software that sends real time alerts & reports to authorized persons at any location. This allows ‘Visibility into machine shops‘ for senior managers, while removing a layer of humans who manually collected & processed data earlier. This ‘pure’ & ‘real time’ data drives actions that result in HUGE jump in productivity.

·AFFORDABLE AUTOMATION eliminates need for machine operators, ensures jump in OEE by 20% or more & has an ROI of less than 24 months.

2. QUALITY:

·AUTO-GAUGING OF MACHINED JOBS & AUTO-CORRECTION OF CNC MACHINES. This is also called ‘Closed Loop’ Manufacturing and ensures that near zero defect manufacturing can be done without relying on skilled operators & inspectors. In Traditional machine shops THREE skills are required in CNC machine operators, i.e. measurement skill, analytical skill & offset correction input skill. Operator can make errors in all three ‘skills’ and hence there is a need for line inspectors & pre-dispatch inspectors, who themselves can make errors, thereby allowing defective parts to reach customers. Closed loop manufacturing eliminates need for skilled operators & inspectors, and ensures that defective parts are produced at all.

3.      MACHINE HEALTH:

·PREDICTIVE MAINTENANCE TECHNOLOGY allows maintenance teams to be alerted BEFORE a defect occurs in a machine. ‘A stitch in time, saves nine’ and actions taken in time ensure that machines do not breakdown, thereby resulting in huge savings to the machine shop.

To fulfil Vision 2021, Indian manufacturers have to start testing & adopting the above mentioned FOUR key technologies which can be called i4A (Industry 4.0 & Affordable Automation). And the best way to start is with Low Cost Fast Outcome Pilots (LoFOP) which help your organization quickly conclude WHERE to focus on & WHAT technologies to implement…and the time to start LoFOP is NOW!