THE CIM CARD ERA BEGINS

Despite the infrastructure, hardware, and skillset challenges, India is navigating its way to automation by adopting Connected Intelligent Machines

- PRATIMA HARIGUNANI

The person who invented the wheel was, definitely, a genius. But what about the person who invented those three more wheels?

Machines have been around us for so long now that we cannot even imagine how our ancestors ever managed without them. But just a few decades from now, our progeny would wonder the same thing: how did we do without CIMS - Connected Intelligent Machines for so long?

The three new wheels here are connected, intelligent and easy to use, and very soon we would see their various avatars throbbing inside our factories, mines, oilfields, highways and whatnot.

WHAT ARE THEY?

We already had machines. So, what makes this new species different from what they have been doing so far? The definition, interestingly, changes as per the context but the essence is similar.

In KPMG's assessment, when we think of CIMS, we are thinking of an ecosystem of machines and plants that can talk to each other via loT or any intelligent technology. Earlier, Individual machines could be sitting in India and Germany with no connection but now connectedness is a game-changer.

Ask Sridhar Gopalakrishnan - Senior Vice President, Hexaware Technologies and he says that a CIM is an autonomous device that is part of a large network of such devices. It is intelligent in the sense that a CIM will make decisions on its own, respond to incentives embedded in the network, maintain trustworthiness and learn from other devices.

"Machines today are specific operators with clearly defined process steps to follow. Human mediation is required between the output of a machine and the input of another, especially when the output is not deterministic. With CIMS, this mediation will be reduced substantially. CIMS will also be context-aware and take personalised prescriptive actions."