Mobility to Management: How far can science innovate?
Effecting large-scale technology-driven transformation in business efficiencies, governance and consumers' lives requires multilateral collaboration between multiple organisations, minds and insights. This thought leadership was aptly illustrated at the Hitachi Social Innovation Conclave in partnership with Business Today held at ITC Gardenia in Bengaluru on August 24.
The conclave was composed of four insightful panel discussions featuring business leaders from across industry verticals.
Manufacturing Excellence via IoT
Manufacturers must develop a clear understanding of end-to-end Industry 4.0 implementation to generate benefits and ROI. This underpinned the discussions at the first panel discussion of the day -- Leveraging i4.0 to boost top- and bottom-lines.
Moderated by Sudhanshu Mittal, Director-IOT, Centre of Excellence for IOT, NASSCOM, the session panellists included Nagaraju KB, CEO, Innovative Retail Concepts (Bigbasket.com), Ravi Raghavan, MD & CEO, Bharat Fritz Werner, S Ganesh Mani, SVP, Hyundai Motor India and Anindya Bhattacharya, Lead Digital Operations, Hitachi Consulting.
Speakers outlined their strategies on Industry 4.0 based digital transformation - and their key challenges and learnings in the journey. Referring to cyber security challenges thrown up by digitisation, Mittal noted, "Overcoming these challenges will enable manufacturers to reach the objectives of digitisation by 2020."
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The Future of Transportation
The panel discussion on 'The Future of Transportation' focussed on several critical components of smart transportation architecture for India.
The session was moderated by Prof. Sanjay Gupta, Professor and Head, Transport Planning Dept., School of Planning and Architecture, and included Dr. N Rajendran, CTO, National Payments Corporation of India, Pradeep Singh Kharola, IAS, MD, Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation and Mangal Dev, Director and Head, Hitachi Rail Systems BU, India and South Asia Region.
Among the key talking points were using data analytics in urban transportation to maximise customer experience and designing intuitive train management systems. The speakers were unanimous in their views on the need for urban transport systems to adequately leverage technology and provide integrated services for door-to-door mobility.
"Transportation services are performed by multiple agencies under the central, state and city governments, all of which do not necessarily work together. Technology can be the only enabler of data and service integration between disparate agencies," Dr Gupta observed.
Building the City of the Future
Laying the foundation for an urban development vision to integrate information and communication technology (ICT) and IoT was the objective of the panel discussion on 'Today's Smart City - and Tomorrow's'.
Moderated by Pratap Padode, Founder-Director, Smart Cities Council India, the session's panellists included Dr. Anjali K Mohan, Research and Policy Head, IHF, Anveshi Gutta, Director, Government & Public Sector, PwC India, Dr. Manvendra Deswal, Head - Smart Cities Mission, CII and Gopalakrishna Kuppuswamy, VP, Global Solutions, Hitachi Consulting.
A primary focus of the discussion was application of Smart Solutions to enable cities to use technology and data to improve infrastructure and services, as well as the challenge of ensuring citizen safety in megacities. Kuppuswamy referred to Hitachi India's collaboration with the government of Andhra Pradesh to build a Command and Control Centre to enhance public safety, surveillance as well as real-time governance.
Simplifying the Data Conundrum
What are the best practices in creating the data-driven organisation? This question launched the final session -- De-mystifying the Data Pipeline.
The data-driven path is hurdled with barriers of data quality, integrity, security and data silos, said session moderator Sameer Dhanrajani, Chief Strategy Officer, Fractal Analytics, as he opened the discussion to panellists Mukesh Deshpande, Executive Director, PwC India, Piyush Chowhan, VP & CIO, Arvind Lifestyle Brands, Kumar KV, VP & Group Head of IT, Narayana Hrudayalaya and, Jayraj Ugarkar, Director, IoT & Analytics, Hitachi Consulting.
According to Ugarkar, among the biggest trends in the Data Analytics domain is an uptick in instrumentation and data collection. The speakers reiterated that traditional MIS (Management Information Systems) is being replaced by real-time decision support systems across all functions, while effective management today is harnessing Big Data in finding answers to questions that were never asked earlier.
The next edition of the Hitachi Social Innovation Conclave in partnership with Business Today will be held on October 12, 2017 at Taj Lands End, Mumbai.
