future Factories

INDIA MAY HAVE JOINED THE MANUFACTURING RACE LATE, BUT A NEW GENERATION OF FACTORIES COULD HELP IT LEAPFROG INTO GLOBAL COMPETITIVENESS

- BY SHELLEY SINGH

WHEN HENRY FORD introduced the moving assembly line at his automobile factory in 1913, it changed the economics of production. Cars could be built faster, more consistently and at lower cost, helping transform the automobile from a luxury product into a mass-market one.

More than a century later, manufacturers are once again experimenting with technologies that promise to reshape how factories operate.

Artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, digital twins and connected machines are influencing product design, quality control, inventory management, and maintenance.

As India scales its electronics manufacturing, companies will have to look at making more and more components locally. And end-to-end manufacturing is different from assembling. "A manufacturer of components is dealing with far more complexity than someone who is assembling those components to make a final product. As companies scale up to make components, they will rely more on automated processes and robots," says J.S. Gujral, managing director, Syrma SGS Technology, a Gurugram-based electronics manufacturing company which is setting up India's largest Printed Circuit Board (PCB) plant at Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh.

To be globally competitive and scale up, companies will need newer, more automated, factories.

For example, beyond the main processor in a phone, there are hundreds of components mounted on PCBs. To make these precision components, factories need to upgrade with robots that can multitask. A line with robots might have no humans and could essentially run in the 'dark mode'; such facilities are called dark factories, as no people working inside would mean that the factory may not need lights.

"There could be some version of hybrid dark factories now, but as component manufacturing increases, more robots and automated processes will be used," says Gujral.