By Srinath Srinivasan Siemens India is amongst the forerunners in the country to adopt and provide a suite of solutions for the Industry 4.0 revolution. Recently in Bengaluru, Siemens opened a digital experience and application centre as part of its Industry 4.0 vision for India. The centre has a set up which demonstrates Siemens suite of solutions in real-time for better understanding of how a manufacturing process can be digitised.
For instance, if an impeller, which is a rotating component of a turbine/ pump, needs to be manufactured, Siemens suite of solutions can be deployed from the time of its design till the time of getting the finished product out for integration. Through Siemens’ digital platform, this process of designing, machining and obtaining the finished product with high levels of precision can be taken care of by shop floor technicians with little to no manual intervention. To enable precision design and integration of high precision machines to a Computer Numerical Control (CNC) machine unit, Siemens uses its propreitary software called Sinumerik, which allows easy control and integration of multiple machining/robotic equipments to a single controller. Further, Siemens provides a cloud based IoT platform called Mindsphere which can give engineers/ technicians a real-time analytical view of the shop floor activites and also help communicate with each other.
“For any component, the manufacturing steps are the same. With our suite of solutions, we do not change these steps but focus on how much more efficient and integrated we can make the whole process. This is true not just for large companies but also for SMEs. They can choose to address either one portion or the entire value chain and our solutions can digitise just that,” explains Vijay Pratap Singh, head of Motion Control Business, Digital Factory, Siemens India, talking about the new experience centre and its services.
Earlier in 2015, Siemens India started investing one billion euros to expand its operations in India as part of Make in India programme. This new centre stems from that investment and along with it there is also a training centre which has trained over 2,800 professionals to date, free of training charges. Singh believes that this number will grow multifold in the coming years as Industry 4.0 permeates SMEs. He is also confident that by investing in skilling people, more job opportunities can be created in the upcoming digital era. He believes that this is also the way forward to break the myth surrounding automation and its ability to replace human workforce. While the adoption of the technology itself will take time, the awareness about it is fast spreading across businesses of all sizes. Experts at Siemens list out automobile, aerospace, pharma and FMCG companies as the early adopters of Industry 4.0.
According to a recent ‘Deloitte Readiness Report’ released at World Economic Forum on January 21 for Industry 4.0, 2042 C-level executives from companies having revenue of $1 billion or more were asked for their views on the lines of society, strategy, technology and talent. Out of this, 130 respondents were from India. At the end of the survey, Deloitte has concluded that Indian businesses demonstrated the right aptitude for success in Industry 4.0 due to their focused approach to upskilling their employees, linking customer satisfaction to societal impact and profits and above all, the ethical use of Industry 4.0 technologies. “Here is a cue for businesses to change the narrative, thanks to the possibilities Industry 4.0 offers, so that profit and purpose can and must co-exist,” says Kumar Kandaswami, partner, Deloitte India, talking about the survey.
With giants like Siemens taking the lead to make it happen in India, it is only right for Indian professionals to expect other companies to put forth their ideas on Industry 4.0 and eventually get benefitted when they are implemented.

Source: financialexpress.com