AWAITING THE TRANSFORMATION

MANUFACTURING TODAY RECENTLY ORGANISED A WEBINAR ON THE TOPIC OF AWAITING THE TRANSFORMATION. HERE ARE EXCERPTS OF THE EVENT.

- SWATI DESHPANDE

THE MACHINE TOOLS INDUSTRY HAS BEEN experiencing disruption in the business. Outbreak of COVID-19 in India put a halt to all the activities in the country. On this backdrop, Manufacturing organised a webinar on the topic of Awaiting the Transformation. Indradev Babu, Managing Director, Ucam India; Ravi Raghavan, MD, Bharat Fritz Werner (BFW); Gururaj D Patil, Managing Director, Emag India; Jay Shah, Managing Director, Tungaloy India; Rajiv Gandhi, Sr. ED Production Maruti Suzuki India and S.M Vaidya, V.P & Business Head, Godrej Aeroapce participated in the virtual panel discussion. Rajesh Nath, Managing Director, VDMA India moderated this panel discussion.

Speaking about it how this situation has led businesses to rethink about their supply chains, Patil said, “As we all know, COVID-19 has thrown almost every industry and every nation into a strict regime of lockdown. Every industry whether its manufacturing or services, it is hit by the consequences. Having said this, I would like to highlight that the auto industry as it primarily drives the Indian manufacturing sector. It had been going through multiple disruption even before pandemic struck. Shift from BS IV to BS VI, emergence of electric vehicles, etc. created disruption in the industry. So the question is how do we manage predictability in these unpredictable times? Apart from the changes mentioned before, there is yet another change we are likely to experience in coming months – i.e. higher demand for individual owned or individual driven private mobility. As the social distancing will prevail, people will prefer driving their own vehicle than depending on the public transport.” He further added that there is light at the end of the tunnel.