Connecting Intelligence

Greetings friends,

We have just concluded the Dataquest T-Schools Conference very successfully.

Interestingly, there were calls from the speakers for India to stop looking at the West. The reason: the parameters of the West are vastly different from those in India. We certainly have different needs.

Prof. Pankaj Jalote, Distinguished Professor & Founding Director, IIIT Delhi, elaborated on how a learning-outcome-based approach can help to train the students. There is a need to get into the industrial manufacturing, based on the new-age technology, stressed Lt Gen (Retd) SP Kochhar, CEO, Telecom Sector Skills Council (TSSC).

And, that statement brings me to Industry 4.0!

Products today are getting more smarter, more intelligent, and more complex. This is all because of the relentless innovation, and increased complexity, with shorter market windows.

I recall a statement from a very good friend, the late Chuck Grindstaff, former CEO, Siemens PLM, in Boston, from Sept. 2015. Back then, he said that digitalization is the strategy to realize smart innovation. It weaves a digtal thread across the value chain. New technologies and paradigms are enabling digitalization.

As of now, companies are digitalizing plant behaviour. It allows for future orders, resource availability, and engineering changes. Intelligent models are creating the digital thread. There are also the integrated mechatronics models. Companies are now finding thay they have to manufacture differently.

Enterprise resource planning (ERP), product lifecycle management (PLM) and manufacturing execution systems (MES) have traditionally been individual pieces. They are now coming together to create the foundation for modern-day lean manufacturing.

For instance, how is PLM-MES integration is helping businesses? It allows you to continuously respond to shifting demands, by distributing latest product designs and assembly methods to a more connected, more efficient and effective production value chain, thus assuring complete visibility between your production and engineering domains.

In future, PLM will be much more intelligent. We also need to continue working on connecting intelligence.

We are now working on developing the Industry 4.0 Conference, Delhi, this coming August. We hope to see many of you, there.

• Pradeep Chakraborty