Electronics industry is right there at the top in smart adoption
Published on : Saturday 09-05-2020
Amit Saluja is Senior Director and Head of NASSCOM Centre of Excellence
How uniform is the Smart trend in India given the wide disparity?
Smart in a true sense is digital redefining products, processes or systems. It is not just manual to automated, it is interconnected and intelligent automation that ensures consumer gets exponential increase in value. All of us are familiar with smart products, thanks to disruption that electronic gadgets have done. Everyone has smartphone, smart watch is gaining popularity as every watch brand has come up with their version and there is watch for every segment. Smart processes are transforming the operations, thanks to Artificial intelligence as it is automating even the decision making process. One very common example is intelligent traffic
management system that helps in adjusting signal timings in real time based on vehicle volume. At a system level we are talking about Smart Grid in energy companies and smart factories in manufacturing. Now to answer the question on how uniform is the smart adoption in India, I will say at the product level, we are very much competing with the world in usage as we are one of the biggest markets for gadgets; but for processes and systems, which happens primarily in B2B segment, there is still lot more to be done. Government is investing in building smart grids. Challenges are more in factories as due to high investments very few large enterprises only have made their plants completely automated. Medium and small companies are still far away as their focus is digitisation, rather than digitalisation.
What are the sectors that are best prepared for the Smart revolution – transportation, energy, healthcare, etc?
Electronics industry is right there at the top in smart adoption, both in terms of building smart products and also manufacturing through smart processes. Automotive is the next sector that has taken the lead with connected vehicle technology. Vehicle manufacturing always had automation but now through digital platforms companies are getting insights on customer behaviour and at the same time helping customers get personalised experience. Conversion to smart grid is happening and there are plans in place to accelerate. In manufacturing automotive and pharmaceuticals has taken a lead to make their factories smart, but for others it will still be a slow process considering the current market scenario and investments needed. Healthcare and education are the two most promising sectors for the smart revolutions. Use of wearable devices in patient monitoring is still at nascent stage and there is lot of potential to grow. Online teaching is seeing a major boom thanks to lockdown and reach of internet in every corner of the country.
Talking of healthcare in general, Covid-19 in particular, can IoT play a bigger role?
Healthcare as I mentioned earlier is the most promising sector to gain from smart revolution and it is all due to IoT applications. Sensors are getting cheaper and computing power and network speed are getting bigger and this has made a great case for leveraging wearable devices in both diagnosis and monitoring. Growth in this sector was anyways happening but
Industrial Automation Lead story “Smart Age – Future Living”, Responses to questions by Amit Saluja
Covid-19 has put the paddle in top gear. There are completely new use cases and applications that has become critical, smartphone is getting used for contact tracing as the location and call data is helping to know who all came in close contact and create a geo fencing for the people who are in quarantine. When lockdown eases there will still be restrictions at workplace and health and safety compliance will govern how much enterprise can function. Wearable devices has found applications in continuous monitoring of the health of the worker in plants and this again will become the most sought after solution for every organisation.
Smart Everything, but still the world appears unprepared for pandemics like Covid-19. Time to factor in contingencies?
Frankly I will say none could have prepared for pandemic like Covid-19, even our older generation also would have never experienced this level of impact. Right now everyone in world is in locked down state. But I agree we need to build some level of contingencies to take care of unexpected shift in market and automation can be the saviour here. Biggest benefit of smart solutions is that it enables readjustment under changing operational constraints. We have a great live example of this as under current crisis we were quickly able to launch the Covid-19 contact tracing app only because smartphones were with everyone and AI enabled analysis of large amount of data to take a decision. Factories that had invested earlier in digital are in much better state than others as they are able to produce even with minimum level of workforce.
Given the shortages of essentials like masks and ventilators, is it possible to have Smart Factories that can at short notice switch over to manufacture something else?
Absolutely, that’s the real smartness, flexibility based on situation is the key. In the current crisis country needed equipment to fight Covid-19 and companies had excess capacity to be used for producing them, in a very short time enterprises were able to repurpose their production lines to help produce personal protective equipment. We already have so many examples for this quick shift in product manufacturing. Luxury perfume makers Dior and Givenchy are producing hand sanitiser, Reliance used its production line to produce face masks and PPE’s for nation’s health workers. Mahindra, Maruti and Hyundai are coming forward to
manufacture 50,000 ventilators by May.
Will the Covid-19 crisis prove a boon to make a really Smart World?
What Covid-19 has done is the cultural shift, the kind of products we want now and how those should be delivered has changed. It will not be easy to be face-to-face in every situation, we need to learn to operate remotely and this is applicable for every sector. So yes it will push the world to be smarter and operate as per situation. Communications will happen through devices rather than direct and that’s where technology innovation will happen more. Till now virtual transactions were more common in banking but now every industry will have remote operations, online classes, AR/VR assisted guidance in manufacturing, remote diagnostic and consultation in healthcare are just some of the examples. I am sure lot of innovators are busy right now to come with new solutions for the new normal. World in post Covid-19 era will be very different, cyber physicals systems will drive the transformation to enable human machine interactions in every aspect of our life.
After smart phone, which device is most likely to become integral part of daily life in future?
Till now we have the smartphone that helps transfer data from one person to other or to systems but this will not be enough to meet our demands. Wearable devices will make every individual smarter in future. We will need data acquisition devices also along with data transfer as the variety of data requirement will be lot more. Physical health and environmental
Industrial Automation Lead story “Smart Age – Future Living”, Responses to questions by Amit Saluja
parameters will become must to track and analyse and that’s where wearable devices will play an important role. Smart watch is already gaining interest, we will see next level of growth by having smart PPEs and different kind of bands that will enable to get real time data of individual and systems. This integration of wearable devices with Smartphone will become the game changing solution that will lay the foundation of smart world.
Amit Saluja is Senior Director and Head of NASSCOM, Gandhinagar Centre of Excellence. He has 24 years of leadership experience performing diverse roles with Business and Technology teams primarily in Strategic Marketing & Sales, Business Strategy, IT solutions design and development, Process Development and Program Management. In the past Amit has worked with IBM, General Electric and RPG Transmission Ltd, performing diverse roles with Business and Technology teams in Strategic Marketing & Sales, Business Strategy, IT Solutions