The Future Is Smart

Siemens is focussing on digitalisation of physical processes to future-proof its customers’ businesses, as well as its own.

- Aveek Datta

Nestled on the edge of the Western Ghats in the eastern suburb of Kalwa near Mumbai is a sprawling manufacturing campus that belongs to German engineering conglomerate Siemens’ Indian arm, Siemens Ltd. A wide spectrum of industrial products ranging from motors to switchgear is made in this factory, which came up way back in the 1960s.

On a wet July afternoon after a torrential downpour, work at the unit churning out switchgear—a key component of industrial equipment—is on in full swing. The factory dating back to India’s pre-liberalisation, socialist era can easily be mistaken for a legacy manufacturing unit—outdated and inefficient. But Siemens’ Kalwa works is anything but.

Siemens, in India and globally, is increasingly focussing on digitalisation as the new way of life for itself and its diverse set of clients. “Customers don’t simply want a product like a motor anymore. They want to know how we can help them become more competitive and the answer lies in greater digitalisation and customisation,” Sunil Mathur, managing director and chief executive officer of Siemens Ltd, tells Fortune India.

In 2017, Siemens decided to showcase its Kalwa factory as an example of how it can help brownfield industrial installations transform and become more efficient through automation and digitalisation. The factory uses a variety of solutions—physical and digital—developed by Siemens to allow the asynchronous manufacturing of different types of switchgear on a single production line. “We thought if we are going out and propagating digitalisation, we should be able to demonstrate how it makes economic sense for us,” Mathur says.