Industry 4.0 and its relevance in manufacturing sector of INDIA

Industry 4.0 ?

Its a word coined by German manufacturing giants,of course it was relevant from early 20th century but currently its relevance is more in many of the manufacturing economies of the world.It can also be termed as the 4th industrial revolution.

As mentioned in the self explanatory image, the industrial revolution  actually started in Europe in the early 1800s, after the invention of steam power and electricity.These inventions led to large scale mechanization of looms,iron and steel and other FMCG industries to satisfy the ever increasing demand of the consumers.

The second industrial revolution started in early 1950's and it was successfully demonstrated by M/s Ford Motors for the manufacturing of it infamous 'T' model.

Before the introduction of assembly line concept, vehicles were manufactured in batch production method.This increased the cost of manufacturing  and delay in delivery of vehicles to customer.

The cars manufactured by FORD were 40% less expensive than the cars manufactured by Volkswagen during that time.Due to this it was an instantaneous hit among the customers.During this period some of the lean manufacturing concepts like JIT (Just in time),TPS (Toyota production system),SMED (single minute exchange die ) TPM (Total productive maintainance) came into practice.

The third industrial revolution started in 1980s.This revolution paved the way by the introduction of computer systems,robotics and sensors in manufacturing sector.During 2nd industrial revolution machining was done using conventional machines but now the machining were done using CNC machines which decreased the lead time for manufacturing components in an automobile OEM and increased productivity and quality of the parts being produced.

What is I 4.0?

In an industry 4.0 shop floor layout,every machinery is connected via internet,and all the machines or the asset will have its Digital Twin.Productivity and idle time will be monitored continuously and with the amount of data generated, solutions will be found for further improvement.Before Industry 4.0 productivity of 85% was considered as a bench mark but now we can achieve  up to 98%.

To explain in simple words , consider a 5 axis CNC machine in an I4.0 environment.This has 5 servo motors, the bearing vibration and temperatures are also monitored so that whenever there is any abnormal increase in the parameters it can be replaced before failure so that the lead time to repair, ordering and machine downtime can be reduced considerably.(condition monitoring of machinery parts)

Basically I4.0 consists of 9 components -

Autonomous robots,simulation,software integration,IOT,cyber security,additive manufacturing,cloud,augmented reality, and big data analytics.

I4.0 relevance in INDIA - Of course its the need of the hour for every manufacturing OEM's in India.Every industry now has a team working on the I4.0 projects.

As per the statistics I4.0 will cause 1million job losses in Indian manufacturing sector over the next decade and 0.6 million high skill jobs will be added into the sector.Most of the low skill jobs will be completely eliminated but the onus on the OEM,s should be that of re-skilling its existing employees.For a country like India, manufacturing is the only sector which can give large scale employment and even the govt. initiatives are also in that direction like Make in India,skill India etc.

As the 50% of the Indian GDP is dependent on agriculture,of which 30% of the sector rely only on notorious unreliable monsoons , urban migration in India is at a faster rate in search of better fortunes.If industries are migrating to I4.0 what about the prospectus of a person getting job in a manufacturing industry. Only time will Answer