Recent news around talks about the proposal put before the government by a consortium of start-ups, industry associations, solution providers, and the manufacturing industry, to establish the S L Kirloskar Centre of Excellence for IoT in Pune. The IoT cluster is being established for industries working in the Industry 4.0. This will help Indian industrialists to practice industry 4.0 according to the country’s conditions and realities, instead of simply replicating the original German model.
The concept of Industry 4.0 came into being in Germany to tackle the shortage of skill and people. Only high level of automation could solve this problem, however, in India there lies a different set of conditions and problems. Vikram Salunkhe, MD, Accurate Gauging & Instrumentation states, “We don’t need to replace people, but have to adapt it to our needs, and come up with a human-centered use of technology. This is what the IoT Cluster would be doing.”
The Indian manufacturing industry will be able adopt the new emerging technologies, once the cluster is established. Pune already has the ecosystem to support IoT solution providers, consulting companies, training institutions, IoT users, and a large manufacturing unit. Thus, Pune turned out to be the right destination for this initiative.
The move will also support the electronic cluster arriving here. “The government was open to setting up such an IoT cluster in Pune and the Department of Heavy Industries is supporting this plan,” comments Vinay Nathan, CEO, Altizon. Meetings are being convened currently and are holding meeting with industry representatives to take this forward and also provide financial assistance.
The SLK Centre will assist enterprises big and small, to adopt these technologies and bridge the technology gap. As a part of this move, Kirloskar Institute of Advanced Management Studies will be creating a repository or used cases, while the Tata Strategic Management Group will work on a framework for execution of the project.
The general picture of most Indian shopfloors include a lot of CNC machines separated within silos. Most of the decisions on the shopfloors are usually based on historic information. “The entire manufacturing industry is changing and it is an opportunity for the Indian machine tool industry to embrace IoT,” expresses Salunkhe.
Amost all the major players in the arena, including Siemens, Bosch, GE, Thyssen Krupp, John Deere, Volkswagen, and Bajaj Auto are operating in Pune. Moreover, they have expressed interest in creating this ecosystem, which could take flight in six months’ time. Industry 4.0 is a methodology requiring mass participation for it to bring value. The bigger companies hold the resources to invest, while the smaller ones can’t. Basically, Tier 2 and Tier 3 firms need to put a lot of work. “A cluster would enable everybody in the ecosystem to participate and be part of this value chain,” concludes Salunkhe.
