Pimpri Chinchwad Small Industries in northwestern Pune, an automotive manufacturing hub in India largely made up of small and medium-scale enterprises (SMEs), released a statement from their president, Sandeep Belsare. He said over the past few years the medium-scale units in the hub have been investing heavily in automation. Small units also are trying to automate their manufacturing processes.
“Work that would earlier take us a few days and had to be done by hand, is now being done in a matter of minutes. If automation technology was more affordable, more industries would go for it.”
All the processes, such as continuous welding, boring, and drilling functions on metal are areas that are being automated, including technologies like AI, robotics, and laser cutting.
“Since the pandemic, MSMEs have realized that they cannot survive without leveraging technology. They need to be part of the digital ecosystem.” Said Siddesh Naik, sales leader for AI and Automation at IBM India in a statement.
Sanjeev Arora, the India president of Swiss-Swedish automation provider ABB, has said SMEs can reap the benefits of robotics and automation for their entire production process. Areas in the manufacturing process that can be automated are sourcing, packaging, managing inventory, planning production, ensuring quality, improving safety, reductions in downtime, and the overall decrease in energy use. The MSME segment is employs the largest number of workers in India. Automotive and allied manufacturing makes up about half of all manufacturing in India.
Some experts in the auto industry say digitization is becoming critical for SMEs, with electric vehicle products growing at substantial rates. “EVs will set the automotive manufacturing world on its head, especially in cell and battery pack manufacturing.” Said Dilip Sawhney the managing director of Rockwell Automation in India.
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The role of the supplier he went on to say, will get revolutionized during the process.
Overall readiness to scale and expand into automation was low across the automotive industry. That is why the leaders in supply technology were organized to offer educational sessions on how the technology could work for them. Smaller companies do not have the CAPEX capabilities in order to invest in automation. Automation service providers say that new models of payment and licensing and Software as service solutions are helping the automotive industry in general. Many believe more needs to be done and think the government should fund and step in to help.
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