Digitisation making strides

By OEM Update Editorial June 29, 2017 5:26 pm IST

Indian manufacturing sector is making its strides towards digitisation at a rapid pace and we expect it to be implemented across segments and cover more than two-third of the industries in next 4-5 years.

EXOR is a manufacturer of high-quality, innovative, and visually appealing Human Machine Interface (HMI) solutions. Commenting on the importance of adopting digitisation in manufacturing process, Varun Arora, National Sales Manager, Exor India Pvt Ltd said, “More than 80 per cent of companies opine that due to digitisation the pace of technology will increase at an unprecedented rate over the next couple of years. In current market scenario, the end consumer has far more power than in the past. Customers increasingly demand high quality, low cost, fast delivery, and the ability to order fully individualised products.”

As companies are leveraging digital technologies to achieve global reach, customers are using mobile and social platforms to wield global influence. If they’re not satisfied with your products and services, Arora opines, they can easily turn to your competitors, regardless of location.

Broader range of raw materials need to be sourced
Today every aspect of that model is being transformed. A product should be designed to be highly customisable and a variety of configurations to be tested. One must appeal to highly segmented markets around the world. A much broader range of raw materials need to be sourced. Instead of a small number of large shipments, a large number of small shipments are needed to be managed.

In the past, you managed your own operations, and your suppliers simply provided you with materials, parts, or components. You may have worked closely with certain partners, but as long as they delivered on time and with the right quality, you didn’t need to fully understand their processes. However, Arora explains, “With today’s demands for customisation and rapid delivery, your suppliers are integral to your manufacturing strategy. They need real-time visibility into orders for individualised products so they can deliver the right configurations at the right time. And you need real-time visibility into their operations so you can respond proactively to problems before they derail production of each specific order. That requires a whole new level of integration and resource exchange as part of digitisation.”

Making rapid strides
Digital is now a priority for most of industrial companies in India. Industrial leaders are digitising essential functions within their internal vertical operations processes and are focused on driving both revenue growth and operational efficiencies. “Indian manufacturing sector is making its strides towards digitisation at a rapid pace and we expect it to be implemented across segments and cover more than two-third of the industries in next 4-5 years. Currently we see a lot of digitisation in segments like pharmaceuticals, automotive and oil and gas,” Arora said while talking on the preparedness of Indian manufacturing sector on digitisation.

Designed for ‘smart factory’
All our new developments are done keeping “Smart Factory” concept in mind, claims Arora. Exor offers Cloud enabled PLC+HMI for Industry 4.0, the x Platform. The x Platform is developed on Altera’s innovative, single-chip PLC reference design runs on the Altera ARM-based Cyclone V SoC. Developed in partnership with 3S Smart Software Solutions, Exor International, and Barco Silex, the reference design implements motion control, EtherCAT, HMI and secure enterprise communication over OPC-UA in a microSOM (micro system-on-module).

Altera Corporation (now Intel’s Programmable Solutions Group) received the first-place ACE award for best reference design during the EE Times and EDN 2015 UBM Canon Annual Creativity in Electronics (ACE) Awards ceremony at the Embedded Systems Conference held in Santa Clara, California, on July 21, 2015. Altera received top honours in the Ultimate Product: Reference Design category for its single-chip, Cloud-enabled programmable logic controller (PLC) reference design for Industry 4.0 applications.

Delivering products in time with efficiency
Explaining on how Exor India embraces digitisation in its manufacturing process, Arora said, “We use digitisation in our manufacturing process to increase our efficiency in all aspects like maintaining adequate raw materials and focus on ‘Just in Time’ approach for making our products available to market always at the right time. We take pride in delivering our products to customers globally in time with more than 97 per cent efficiency.”