It’s all about the growth!
The Indian markets are slowly beginning to feel the stimulus for the instrumentation, control and automation industry. Today, the growing awareness among the Indian consumer has ensured that process industry has the right mix of technologies that can beget the growth opportunities, which the industry has been eyeing and seeking for a long time now. Indian automation is advancing at a fast pace, yet it is one area that can never be achieved and admired – it is something that needs a constant innovation and identification of trends in technology and the innovations that thrust the implementation of automation in other countries – as it is a development that will always impact the future of automation in India. While everything may seem perfect at the face of it, India still has much to worry about the state of innovation in the automation industry. Like always, it is really in the hands of the decision-makers in each industry to bring home the best that technology has to offer.
Having comprehended the importance of automation for the success and progress of the industrial set-up and thereby the country, today many companies are making large investments in bringing the latest technologies for the processes. Today, the manufacturers have also discovered the opportunity that awaits them in almost all production facilities in vertical industries, thanks to the awareness of the customers about the latest technology innovations. The demand of technology and the subsequent complying by the manufacturers has put India on a path of economic growth. Today, the competition among manufacturers has created many advantages for the customers as far as the use of automation is concerned.
India, as one of the world’s fastest growing economies, has to technologies at a rather quick pace. India’s growing foreign trade, rising internal consumer demand, growth in infrastructure growth as well as the revival from the economic slowdown has only given the entire financial set up a new lease of life. Ambrish Mehta of AMC Automation, Ahmedabad believes that India has now realized the importance of developing its own strength with automation instead of being the smaller ally of the world. Mehta says, “Automation is the answer to India’s pursuit for being a world-class industrial competitor. This is a feeling that is contagiously spreading across all industry verticals and everyone wants to use automation from a student library to hospitals to manufacturing plants.”
Mehta believes that India, along with China is fast gaining much control in the field of automation, which until now, the USA and Western Europe enjoyed. India’s reliance on automation for power plants, refineries, chemical and metal production is increasingly growing. Sudheendra Sharma of Cat-eye Controls, Gurgaon, says, “Today, India like the highly industrialized countries, is looking at improving the quality of its products as well as give consumers much choice because even the present day consumer is very market-conscious and understands his requirements better than before. Automation is also needed to enhance the process safety and plant availability as well as efficiently use the limited energy resources and try to be as sustainable as possible. Automation is a single solution to achieving quality as well as the environmental balance.” Apart from this, the growing interface, optimization, quality control and product tracking are a few advantages that India has now estimated to receive from higher automation controls.
Sandeep Sharma, DGM (Operations) Tinsley Group India feels that higher accuracy and better interfaces are the trends that can help India much along with the intelligence and remote diagnostics that automation processes today bring along. Sharma says, “At Tinsley, we offer the most intelligent data loggers, controllers and wireless sensors that are not only avant-garde but also forceful in giving the industrial processes that much needed thrust.” While decentralized automation which enables intelligent dispersing of automation components across the plant like smart pumps has become common in many plants in India, allowing a much improved level of interaction and communication within a plant.
Today, automation is gaining importance even in the medium and small units, unlike earlier when its focus area was restricted to large manufacturing industries. Smaller industries and manufacturing units are beginning to see automation in a new light because of their low productivity. With the automation equipment becoming more usable and affordable, the cost-benefit works in favor of these small industries – in turn, driving automation further. Umesh Gupte, Director, Systematic controls, Pune, says, “Today, the Indian automation industry is estimated at about Rs 10,000-crore and is only growing at a fast pace – as much as 25 per cent per annum – since 2008-09. This is not just a good graph, but also an indication that in the years to come automation will see only more positive acceptance in industrial processes.” Gupte believes India’s greatest advantage lies in the fact that it has no pressure of choosing technologies like the Western countries. “Fortunately, while every one keeps an eye on industrial progresses in India, we are not constantly watched and scrutinized like the US or Germany, thus giving us the freedom to choose whatever technology we think best for our set-up,” says Gupte. Over the past few years, he says, most automation products have become commodities that are available in abundance, thus equally vulnerable to price reductions and stiff competition. Recession makes the competition more brutal with the basic features and functions of PLC and DCS systems being replicated to bring down costs and make it available to low budget businesses. It is also making the software easily imitable, through functional equivalents.
An expert who has been implementing projects for the most efficient plants across the country believes that choosing the right automation combinations facilitates integration of manufacturing processes with business systems. “It reduces the dependency on goods that are imported from industrialized countries, instead making India produce the best quality within the reach of the users and of course at a much affordable price. For instance, manufacturing of something as important as steel can be so easy and abundant by putting in place the right automation technologies that it will drastically reduce the need to import the raw material for manufacturing so many commodities, including automobiles,” he says.
Today, India needs automation in almost every industry. Tinsley’s Sharma believes that every industry needs a boost as only high-cost plants are automated in the present day scenario. Technologically oriented industries such as power plants, stones and earth industries, glass and ceramics, iron, steel, non-ferrous metal production, rolling mills for steel and aluminum sheets, chemical and pharmaceutical, petro, pulp, cardboard and paper , the food, mining, oil and gas and industries relating to the environmental protection such as drinking water, sewage plants, incinerating plants and so on are all included in the purview of process industries, yet, each of these industries consists of at least one part of an entire process requires advanced automation, where it is lagging. Scott Fu, Regional Sales Manager, India, Moxa Inc., feels that though it is impossible to pinpoint one industry, automation should be aimed at improving the public life at large. “Personally, I would say that public sector industries that directly affect the life of the people, such as power, water and transportation need to be given a boost. Wireless, including WWAN, e.g. GPRS, and WLAN, e.g. Wi-Fi, and upcoming Wi-Max are India’s future technologies,” says Fu.
Understanding this need for automation in the power sector, the government has in the 2010 Union budget, set down a plan to creating and harness alternative sources of power using automation. Yet, automation must be rightly implemented in this sector if India has to achieve its goals to its fullest potential Sathya Prasad, President SEMI India in Financial Chronicle on March 30, 2010 said, “The technology related to harnessing solar power can be categorized into several key areas related to materials (polysilicon), cells, modules and the remaining portion normally referred to as balance-of-systems (BOS). In terms of manufacturing technology for cells and modules, India is on par with other countries as evident from exports to Germany, US and other markets (this is largely due to the fact that the Indian industry uses manufacturing equipment from global companies). There is a difference, though in that the degree of automation in India is broadly speaking, less compared to Germany and the US. As the volume of production goes up and the drive for higher cost efficiency continues, we anticipate that the gap in automation will be bridged in the coming year. Even in other areas like materials and BOS, manufacturing technology is not the challenge (it is readily available). Yet the real challenge lies in developing the right applications and customizing the applications for India’s energy needs (rural versus urban, connectivity to the Indian grid, harsh environment and user models) which calls for innovations both in technology and business models. The good news is that with innovation in materials and manufacturing, it is possible to drive cost reduction for solar/photovoltaic’s. It is with this intention that the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission rightly emphasizes the need to promote building up the technology and R&D across the entire solar supply chain.”
Experts are however not surprised at the lack of there being an automation system in place to implement the plan for the power sector. “India has never been the best implementer of automation technologies and on many occasions, the technologies that are available have not been effective because of the lack of this will to bring about effective combinations. We lack the pedigree of technology in the sector of renewable energy. The government needs to set up the right policy framework so that technology providers from other countries will find it lucrative to invest in India and recognize the potential it has as a market. Again, there is always a disparity in decoding the complexity of new automation technologies as we have a dearth of the awareness of assimilating the best technologies from those that are freely available here,” says an expert.
Mr. Scott Fu believes that India faces issues related to infrastructure, thus shifting more focus on the industrial design. “For example, the GPRS stability is relatively lower than other countries, i.e. the auto-reconnect and auto-recovery mechanism is more critical in India. On the other hand, due to the weather (temperature and humidity), dust and power supply frequency are too unstable, which the product design should regard.” Gupte feels that just as the Indian industry has adopted enterprise solutions for business processes; it should also consider collaborative systems to bring out the best business value from these technologies. He points out that several companies adapt to Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) for business processes, but falter at the lack of basic plant automation and it leads no where. This despite the fact that India’s manufacturing sector has is a crucial part of the country’s progress, heavily dependent on the level to which one can adopt and implement automation. He says, “Automation in India has come a long way since the early 1990s and its place in growing the country’s GDP is crucial as India must have a strong manufacturing base that can see its economy rise – and automation is an integral part of that process.”
Cat-eye’s Sharma believes that it is the responsibility of the suppliers of automation systems and instrumentation to focus their product development strategies even more on customer benefit and also educate them about the latest possible ways to most efficiently implement then. “Today, it is important to achieve a standardized and modularized plant enabled with enhanced communication and smartness. It is imperative that manufacturers decide to better their own product development skills instead of leaving it to their competitors. This will also allow the suppliers of automation solutions to be constantly prepared to predict the future technology trend. System integration and innovative service concepts for operations that rely on online remote maintenance and remote support, remote optimization and hotline services as well as intelligently combined service packages are today of utmost importance. Innovative logistic concepts like Supply Chain Management (SCM) also enhance technology by making it faster, more flexible and responsive. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) too is a concept that will be a reality in the future.
While lack of skill to implement most technology seems to be one of India’s biggest concerns, experts believe that the scenario is not as bleak as before. Sunil Khanna, President Automation Industry Association (AIA), and Managing Director, Emerson Process Management, told The Financial Express on March 9, 2009 that the recession had made many engineers from reputed institutions turn to automation. Khanna had said, “We are increasingly seeing inclination from large engineering institutes including the IIT Madras and Kanpur for campus recruitments. Engineering graduates from these colleges have been offered jobs with large IT services companies such as Wipro and Infosys, but the engineers now want to look at other options as well.” In fact, the AIA is pretty serious about involving bright engineering students into the automation industry from an early stage – the AIA has approached universities to launch industry initiatives to bring the lacking aptitude into the industry.
The global market for process automation has grown to USD 94.2 billion in 2010. The growth rate for the decade is estimated to be at 4.4%. And while many have always thought US as being the dominating force for technology, India is fast catching up, aiming to achieve automated factories and processes. This has been in India’s vision for a long time now that will enable customers to order online, with secured electronic transactions and even allowing them to pick the best price, size and color. Intelligent robots and sophisticated machines that smoothly and rapidly complete a process are no longer an alien concept in India. India has lived up to its promise of having remote-controlled automation processes in manufacturing and maintenance applications. Today, India has realized the power of communication in plants with powerful and unmanned super-robots that work on networked intelligence being widely available and accepted. Today, the automation industry in India has much communications support with sensors, fast networks, quality diagnostic software and flexible interfaces that are reliability and have a wide reach in diagnosing and error-correction advisories through centralized operations.
And even as so much seems to be perfect about the country, there are many questions to which answers remain elusive. When is it that India will see a day when no company will hold itself back from going in for the latest automation technologies due to budget constrains? What steps need to be taken to ensure that cost-effective automation is available to every company for the betterment of the country at large? While experts do not have the real answers, they believe meticulous planning and futuristic approach is the only way forward. “I can only suggest that the very first step should be better and prudent planning or consulting before system design and implementation,” says Fu, adding that the governmental bodies and ministries have to lend a hand to automate India. “My only comments to the government is to persist developing the country and keep the determination of solid execution,” says Fu. It does ring a bell – after all, the idea is to see India automated!
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