The Fourth Industrial Revolution is changing the manufacturing process by giving manufacturers the opportunity to apply advanced production and information technology (IT) skills to all manufacturable goods. Manufacturers are banking on IoT, which includes the integration of different devices within existing Internet infrastructure, to achieve a variety of goals including cost reduction, efficiency, improved security, meeting tracking requirements, and product innovation.
By using Digital technology to integrate the virtual and real production world, industries are well aware of the ever-growing challenges in their consumer markets. Digitalisation promises lower costs, improved production quality, flexibility and efficiency, shorter response time to customer requests and market demands, and also opens up new and new business opportunities. Companies can now improve customer experience and growth opportunities by incorporating more technologies to respond to changes in market conditions.
In India, while some large enterprises are rapidly evolving in this digital world, many of the Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in the manufacturing sector are yet to embark on the journey of digital technology. COVID-19 has come as a bolt from the blue for the MSME sector and more for non-digital businesses. MSME will have to go through a transition and grind their own internal processes to meet the needs of digitalisation.
This has accelerated the creation of a new technology platform and ecosystem for Large organisations and MSMEs looking to succeed in the post-COVID world where Digitization is no longer an option; it has become a critical necessity in a situation where physical contact will continue to be very limited and remote access to everything will be the order of the day.
Needless to mention, this digital ecosystem created by NASSCOM CoEIndDIC (Industry Digital Innovation Consortium) has brought all the important stakeholders in this process – may it be the manufacturers across various industries or the service providers or the policymakers, industry leaders, veterans and the entire spectrum of industries whether micro, small, medium or large organisations on their areas of challenges faced and way forward under one umbrella.
The factories of the future which will be Digital & Smart and will utilise digital technologies such as Digital Twins, AR/VR, IoT platforms, Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning. This ecosystem of the hyperconnected world, where everything will be connected to everything will enable organisations to make faster data-driven decisions and provide performance analysis using these solutions.
