Empowering the Industry of Future with Smart Manufacturing

By: Industry Outlook Team

Karsten Mueller, Senior VP – Manufacturing and Quality, Bosch India, in an interaction with Industry Outlook, shares his views on the opportunities and challenges in factory automation, and how manufacturers can empower themselves for smart manufacturing.

How do you see the current evolution of factory automation in India? What are the major factors driving the growth of this market?

Cost optimization through productivity and high performance is the need of hour to stay relevant and competitive. With the geopolitical developments in India today, there is a favorable ecosystem and push for manufacturing. For India to a become front-runner in manufacturing, it needs advanced manufacturing supported by higher degrees of automation.

The major factors driving growth for this market come from a conducive ecosystem in manufacturing with initiatives like Aatmanirbhar Bharat, Production linked incentives, etc. With the adoption of new age technologies in manufacturing such as robotics, IoT, and AI, the push for automation will go up by leaps and bounds.

Which are the major technologies emerging in this segment? How are they transforming the way factories operate?

The emergence of advanced technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), and the Internet of Things (IoT) have shown great potential to create a platform between Information Technology (IT) and actual physical operations. Our Bidadi plant would be a prime example. End of line visual inspection is managed in 3 shifts manually.

Any manual operation is prone to errors and we have received customer complaints regarding the same in the past. We have additionally introduced camera-based visual inspection station with AI, which detects errors related to assembly. Going forward, we will be having a close looped mechanism to inform us about the origin and timing of defect.

These are examples of advanced, data-driven high-class manufacturing yielding a range of benefits in terms of quality and productivity while enabling cost competitiveness. India’s industry ecosystem is primed for a major transformation. Bosch in India directs its focus on such innovation jointly by technical functions in plants and its software division RBEI.

How do you see the research and development being done for factory automation in the Indian industry?

I can only speak on behalf of Bosch in India. Bosch is a unique consultative digital transformation partner. Through RBEI, which is also an expertise center for AI having competent team of data scientists, data engineers, and visualization engineers work towards innovation.

The innovations are tested and tried out in our factories as proof of concepts before arriving at a business case. We have our own machine building division called ATMO-6IN, which specializes in industry automation. Bosch factories are immensely benefited from the internal expertise in software and machine building to create a perfect platform for industrial automation.

Bosch has been moving from conventional to digital by transforming businesses and has been constantly striving for creating digital solutions to suit the needs of Indian customers for usability and affordability using 3S – sensor, software and services as products become connected and cognitive.

Manufacturers are mostly reluctant to let go of the legacy systems in place as they are not sure of the tangible results of factory automation? How do you propose to address this challenge of enabling the transition?

At a time when horses were the fastest mode of transport, it was difficult to think of an automobile. But we all know our history. Any change takes time, but to be in the race of being competitive, industries must adopt automation and new age technologies for competitive advantage. For large industries like Bosch and the TATA Group, adopting automation may not be a big challenge. While the large industries in India have understood the benefits of automation and are fast adopters, the problem lies with the small and mid-size industries. Cost is an important parameter for them. At the end of day, every industry looks at return on investments. Investments in automation are costly. Unless we achieve a good scale, automation costs are bound to be expensive and a hindrance for small MSMEs.

Bosch is focused on empowering the industry of future with smart manufacturing solutions that boost efficiency on a large scale. While Bosch plays its part in developing India into a world-class manufacturing hub, we still have a long way to go to cover entire value chain.

Having increased orders forces the manufacturer to push lead times. How can factory automation help manufacturers in scaling up the production?

Our camera-based visual inspection system is a great example of improving quality and productivity resulting in cost competitiveness. Another example to cite is our plant in Naganathapura producing ECUs for automobiles. Previously, we used to define reaction limits where engineers reacted only if there was a deviation to upper or lower limits. Today, with advanced techniques and using data as the new oil, we are able to see the anomalies within upper and lower limits, and prefix issues that might possibly appear in future. This enables faster reaction through predictive analysis. Our Naganathapura plant uses cycle time anomalies to see abnormalities in the production lines and prefix them before there is any process failure. Less process failures means seamless production, increased quality, and lesser downtime.

Apart from the discrete manufacturing companies, other industrial sectors are also increasingly turning to automated solutions. How do you see this change?

Adoption of AI across the value chain by organizations around the world to remain competitive, visible, and adapt to shifting consumer behaviors will undoubtedly unlock the full potential of technology while effectively addressing pent-up demands. The Digital India campaign by Government in the past five years has led India to substantial growth with a massive push in the use of the Internet and data. The industries have witnessed an uptick in digitization and uptake of India-centric services in support of the Digital India initiatives.

Digital proliferation has been a blessing in disguise as automation continues to outgrow industrial expectations at a rapid pace. The Government aims to ensure holistic development of the nation with impetus on developing industrial corridors and smart cities. To promote advanced manufacturing practices, these corridors would further assist in integrating, monitoring, and developing a conducive environment for an industrial transformation.

Where do you see this market in the near future? What is the future road map for Bosch India?

The Government has voiced strong intent to modernize manufacturing sector policy to achieve a self-reliant India and move towards a world-class $1 trillion manufacturing sector by 2024.

Bosch is gaining increased relevance by implementing robotics and automation solutions that augment its smart manufacturing and connected industry solutions. Bosch India embraces the Factory of the Future and augments it with robotics and automation solutions that are fast, safe, and productive with a vison of making India a global manufacturing hub.

Bosch aims at upskilling its workforce on digital competencies through digital fluency programmes and emphasizes a lot on Bosch Production Systems (BPS) to make its production process lean and waste-free. BPS is the focal point for any improvements to be carried out in Industry 4.0.