Microsoft's Future Ready Industry Week: India Inc on making manufacturing digital savvy

Focusing on how enterprises can equip workforce with skills and tools to keep up with the complexities and speed of digital manufacturing, Microsoft's Future Ready Industry Week, Manufacturing Edition, witnessed insights and diverse perspectives from industry leaders, from leading conglomerates such as L&T, Ashok Leyland, Vedanta, Adani Group, Asian Paints and Aditya Birla Group and others.

As per a recent research report by market intelligence firm IDC, in terms of business priorities for the manufacturing industry, identifying new revenue streams, along with digital offerings, is at the forefront and highlights the changing scheme of strategies which are increasingly customer centric, and data driven. Strategies also rely on a seamless ecosystem collaboration and partnership. Industry research also reveals that 40 per cent of Asian manufacturers will adopt an API-led integration strategy to link applications on a single platform to improve agility and visibility across organisations by 2023. The above estimates substantiate the importance of application and data sharing with their ecosystem, which results in increased operational productivity. These themes featured prominently in the sessions hosted by Microsoft.

Sashi Sreedharan Managing Director, Microsoft India, said, "Microsoft aims to fulfill its mission of empowering every person and organisation on the planet to achieve more, by helping customers and partners manufacture a more resilient and sustainable future. We are fueling the manufacturing industry's digital transformation with technology and digital capabilities to unlock new efficiencies and future-proof business." He further added, "Given the accelerated penetration of Industry 4.0 across the Indian manufacturing landscape, Microsoft is uniquely positioned to support our customers in their growth journey by connecting the intelligent, integrated cloud, and edge capabilities of the Microsoft platforms to deliver the highest value."

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S.N Subrahmanyam, CEO & Managing Director, Larsen & Toubro, in a fireside chat session with Anant Maheswari, President Microsoft India, spoke about how the industry giant has been at the forefront of digital innovation and transformation. According to Subrahmanyam, one of the decisions L&T took quite early on was to be a very high-end technology solutions provider which would enable the company to utilise emerging techs, like IoT, Industry 4.0, AI/ML, and several others, so that the firm is able to envisage how to acquire accurate data sets, and thereby, be objective about decision making.

"This data has helped us benchmark ourselves against the best in the world while analyzing the outcome of all this digital activity," he said. 

He further added, "Microsoft has played a very important role and much of IoT and Microsoft Azure is being used extensively at L&T project sites." The L&T boss also highlighted how tech like Microsoft HoloLens has helped L&T train and upskill their employees. 

"This audio-visual method of training has been far more successful than the usual ways and imbibes information into the minds of those learning. L&T's Edutech platform, which provides training on high-tech programming, engineering and vocational training, is also available on Microsoft Azure. L&T's association with Microsoft in multiple ways has aided them to combine technology that is already developed with their own knowledge of technology to elevate the organisation to a different level," he said.

Talking about a roadmap for a digitally ready future enterprise, Sampath Kumar Venkataswamy, Senior Research Manager, Manufacturing insights, IDC Asia, in the session, 'The Future of Make in India' stressed the importance of process transformation in enhancing the digital readiness of Indian manufacturers. 

He stated, "Organizations need to assess their baselines, and if needed, re-engineer their business and operational processes. While investing in technologies that enable data visibility across their value chain. Training their workforce in terms of skilling and re-skilling is imperative for them to be agile."

Vineet Jaiswal- Deputy CEO, Vedanta, spoke about the impact of technology in facilitating a more sustainable future and said it is always better to move to cloud because you are reducing the carbon footprint rather than having your own data center. Moreover, what we are ensuring is that whatever we do from a supply chain perspective, we have the entire end-to-end visibility. This shortens the turnaround time which in turn reduces emissions.

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