Making It in India

A lot of ground needs to be covered to make India a global manufacturing hub. What is the secret sauce needed to fulfil this ambition?

- KRISHNA GOPALAN

MANUFACTURING IS THE backbone of economic development, and India aims to become a global manufacturing hub by 2047. While technology will be a part of this journey, it has to be the right fit. “Technology must work for business,” says Jayanta Banerjee, Tata Steel’s Group Chief Information Officer (CIO), emphatically. That’s not easy to accomplish amid a tech disruption when there are constant discussions on smart manufacturing and the high investments involved.

That said, shop floors across manufacturing firms have undergone a remarkable transformation thanks to the disruption. At Tata Steel, for instance, the entire agglomeration operation—a type of conditioning of iron ore before it makes its way to the blast furnace—is now done by people sitting in an air-conditioned room in Jamshedpur through an array of LED screens. “Our mines are 350 km away, but it hardly matters,” says Banerjee, adding that in the future, more work will take place remotely, with fewer people on the shop floor.

While terms such as AI, Gen AI and ML are a part of the lexicon now, the challenge is to make them relevant to the manufacturing process, say experts. “Technology will not replace human excellence… but competence levels vary across the workforce,” says Banerjee, adding that AI’s role is to remove that variability.

However, the western template of Industry 4.0 (replacing humans with automation) will not work in India since livelihoods stand to be affected, say experts. Instead, one must bring in effectiveness with empathy; instead of knocking off a part of the workforce, one can upskill them, say experts.

FROM THE PRESENT TO THE FUTURE