Manufacturing Sector Shifting To 'Auto' Mode

As the world moves to an ‘auto’ mode, it is but natural that the manufacturing sector is making a shift to adopt automation and robotics like never before.

- Bindu Gopal Rao

While automation was once spurned due to the large amount of human resource in the country, today this is changing. Progressive ministers in the Indian Government actively agreeing to initiate automation programmes and a robotics movement by bringing in advanced technologies has largely contributed to this shift. In addition, India wants to remain competitive globally and is therefore increasingly looking at automation and robotics to increase its competitiveness. There are huge opportunities in new disruptive technologies within automation and robotics.

DO THE NEW

The new form of robotics in the manufacturing space would be mainly focusing on the usage front (more ergonomically) or introduction of robots in manufacturing with ease of handling the same, which is more important so as to free human workers from dirty, dull, and fatigue-inducing jobs, and also to improve quality by eliminating errors, and reduce variability and to cut manufacturing costs by replacing increasingly expensive labour costs.

NS Madhusudhanan, senior manager, robotics business development, factory automation and industrial division, Mitsubishi Electric India, says, “Mainly the usage of AGVs, IIoT, AI, and sensors for predictive analytics to improve the business intelligence and also the automatic storage and retrieval systems, which plays a major role in supply chain management, is new. Also, the IIoT concept gives major space for understanding the condition-based maintenance, which in turn gives an ample opportunity to improve production.”