IIOT: smart machines - smarter business - smartest returns

By Debarati Das

The need of the hour for any and every industry is to be faster, accurate and connected. For this, the global industry is unanimously striding towards becoming an integral part of the Industry 4.0 revolution with smart machines, smart operations and smart manufacturing. India too is picking up the momentum to be a part of this change and employing 'digitalized' business processes and incorporating Industrial Internet of Things (IIOT) in their operations and services.  

The ARC Advisory Group, in July, organised its Fifteenth India Forum titled Industry in Transition: Realizing the Digital Enterprise, in Bengaluru, to discuss how the country is mitigating this change in their systems. The two-day forum had several international IIOT providers including Bentley Systems, Siemens Ltd, IBM, Emerson Automation Solutions etc, explaining the ways to smoothen this transition from manual to digital while giving a snapshot of the trends happening in the global industry platform.

The event also had several Indian companies who spoke about their journey while incorporating IIOT, the challenges they faced and the drastic change that this technology brought to their operations.

“Big change is happening in the software. Leading suppliers are creating software platforms and are shifting towards open platforms helping the companies to make this transition. To become a digital enterprise, all segments of a plant (IT, operations etc) have to be connected digitally to optimize the operations,” said Andy Chatha, President, ARC Advisory Group.

The main question, however, was whether India is ready to change its mindset towards this revolution? Are companies ready to adopt IIOT? Are people/employees ready to move from traditional technology solutions to digital solutions? Is the management ready to invest in this digital technology?

Intelligently connected operations will enable manufacturers to improve uptime, reduce random failures and unplanned shutdowns and thus optimize operating performance making way for smarter products, new service and operating models, new production techniques, and new approaches to design and sourcing.

“ARC believes in collaborative process models to make IIoT a reality. There are so many mega trends happening in the industry. You need to think if you need to be a laggard or be a part of it,” said Ganapathiraman, VP & GM India, ARC Advisory Group.

Read More; IIOT: smart machines - smarter business - smartest returns