“The automotive industry is undergoing a once in a 100 year kind of transition,” said Sudhir Mehta, Chairman and MD, Pinnacle Industries.
At the webinar conducted by CNBC TV18 and Forbes on ‘Smart Manufacturing’, he said, 'The kind of changes that we are now seeing is an order of magnitude much, much greater than we had seen in the past.'
Dilip Sawhney, MD, Rockwell Automation, said all of these changes are calling out for a level of response, which is unprecedented. 'The industry embraces technology to unleash a wave of digital transformation, which we see play out in front of us.'
He noted that the automotive industry has been one of the earliest adopters of technology for the longest time. “Technology has always played the front and the central role in the evolution of the auto industry,” he added.
Further, he believes that people who embrace these changes become much more resilient. “In order to be agile, flexible, nimble, it is imperative to be at the leading edge of technology adoption,” Sawhney added.
Indian Situation
Satyakam Arya, MD and CEO, Daimler India Commercial Vehicle, said India has a very mature automotive market. However, he noted that there is still a huge headroom to grow to capture the global market.
“I believe the next decades are the decades where the real potential of the Indian automotive industry will be harnessed,” Arya added.
Digitalisation will be a key to leveraging this opportunity. “Since we have to do it now, we should not do it based on the technology of the past, we should do it based on the future technology,” he added.
Interestingly, Arya emphasised that players can not just apply technology in the Indian environment because it worked in the West; it must be indigenised.
The other aspect he focused on was spreading awareness about the technologies. People believe that with the coming of technologies, job losses will increase; instead, the fact is that technologies will make it easier for the people on the shop floor to work. “We will need to work on developing that skill; it will be rescaling and upskilling. And it will also be working with the academy to install this curriculum in their environment,” he said.
What Does The Future Hold?
As noted by Mehta, India is and will remain one of the most competitive automotive markets globally. The players need to adopt many new technologies to sustain the market. “From what used to be the automotive industry with mostly mechanical parts with a little bit of software thrown in, over the next decade, we are actually going to move to a situation where the software will be the key differentiator. This is particularly true when we foresee the strong emergence of e-mobility. “In EVs, what distinguishes one from the other is going to be how the software is configured,” Mehta added.
Noteworthy is the fact that the threat of cyber breach also emerges with the emergence of EVs and technology. However, this can be eradicated if the technologies being used are developed in India. This would mean that the open-source and all of the coding of all of the software has to be resident out of Indian service, Mehta noted.
He continued that with the industry-academia connect, this is achievable and will generate a huge requirement for people who understand the software; hence the employment part is also solved.
“I think, the confluence of our skill sets that we have developed in Indian IT industry has been a shining example for the rest of the world that the Indian automotive industry has been very mature and is now looking to take an increasing pace for exports,” Mehta said.
Speaking of the global market scenario, Arya said, “A future factory or a factory of the future will be very different from what it is today. There will be a lot of areas within the factory which will be 'Lights Out Zone,' which means there are no humans working there.”
Besides, the industry will also see factories with end-to-end connected, in terms of all the equipment and everything in its ecosystem, and the decision will be data-driven, he said.
With all these changes, the efficiencies of the factories will improve by double digits while providing end-to-end transparency of the value chain to all the partners in the chain, Arya concluded.