B&R India conducted An Innovation Day Event Successfully
India is witnessing a tremendous evolution in manufacturing sectors with reception of Industry 4.0 over the last few years.The country needs to significantly increase investments in digital technologies in order to sustain manufacturing competitiveness.
To facilitate this shift towards industrial automation and digitization, B&R India held an Innovation Day event on July 12, 2019 in Ahmedabad. The one-day conference was dedicated to the topic of smart manufacturing – with special emphasis on the acute needs of fully automated and connected assets and factories.
B&R CEO Hans Wimmer addressed the event. He highlighted the various accomplishments of the company in 2018 and explained how its innovations help customers around the world enhance productivity, improve quality, avoid unplanned downtime and get ready for Industry 4.0.
He was followed by Jhankar Dutta, Managing Director, B&R India, who illustrated the many benefits of digitalization for manufacturers. In a talk titled “Innovation for High Performance” Shirish Divgi, Managing Director, Plastics Machinery Asia, Milacron, explained how corporate innovation leaders can build a high-performing innovation team. Session topics covered the need for digitization, various automation trends, smart technologies and user experiences.
A panel discussion featured experts from numerous industries speaking on the topic of ‘Building smart machines and factories: Concept to implementation’. The panel comprised Premal Patwa, Technical Director, Prasad & Prashant Group; Satish Godse, Director, NU VU Conair; Jignesh Pandya, Director, Gayatri Controls; Rahul Wathodkar, Sr. Manager Technical Service, Desma India; Subrata Karmakar, President, Robotics Business, ABB India and David Hemetsberger, Strategy Manager – India, B&R Austria.
The main objective of the panel discussion was to explore various aspects involved in the successful digital transformation and ways to ensure long-term ROI. The panelists shared with the audience the current status of Indian machine manufacturing, short-term and long-term challenges and benefits of digitalization and highlighted the importance of digitalization.
Vinay Bansod, CTO, Windsor Machines Limited, spoke on the topic “Value creation for customers through digitization and IoT” noting the growing importance of flexibility, quality and efficiency for delivering value to customers. Anup Mishra, Director, Kalpvrux Converting Solutions, brought to attention various aspects of “Creative converting solutions” along with a few success stories from his company’s journey with its solutions. The company’s industry experts presented innovations such as integrated machine vision, human-track collaboration, hypervisor, digital twin and Industrial IoT with ABB Ability, which help in creating a successful digital enterprises.
With close to 150 participants, Innovation Day – Ahmedabad proved to be an event full of insight for India’s manufacturing SMEs and MSMEs, which highlighted benefits of pursuing a digital transformation of machinery, plants and factories.