Imagine a world without Automation & Digitization during this pandemic. Don’t you think it would have been a scarier place to live in and making us doubt on every next step we take? Fortunately, Digitization & Automation have come to our rescue during this pandemic as we know exactly which area have problems and how we can safeguard us. Similarly, automated machines and systems in several factories made sure that essential items like food, detergents, medicines, Sanitizers etc. are produced with volumes. So, in short both Automation & Digitization have given us a predictability of production and delivery of our essential items. It has also made sure that the prices of these essential products didn’t increase. These human-made technologies have proved us that we can rely on them anytime.
Automation & Digitization make people more productive by reducing non-value-added activities and automating repetitive tasks. Because of real-time information about our machines and operation predictability, machine efficiency improves reducing product wastages and also required utilities consumption like Electricity, Water, Gases etc. Indirectly making our air, water clean and also reducing total manufacturing cost of the products. Thus, Automation & Digitization certainly create win-win situations for businesses, customers and the environment making our lives better.
As of today, only 5% factories in India have either automated or digitized 20% of their manufacturing operations. Now, you might say that factories are not implementing these technologies due to its high cost. Well, that’s not right and especially today in 2020.
Today in India, small computing devices cost less than INR 10000 and have the capabilities of storing machine-wise production data of 1 year for complete factory. That’s the fact and you can even analyze it on that device but putting additional software. These devices are easily available to purchase from several eCommerce platforms and local businesses across India. If the data-size increases beyond the device limit, you can connect your device to cloud and pay less than INR 1000 per month and save data for longer duration. In some factories, these costs would be equivalent to the profits you make every minute now and once implemented can increase your profits by more than 10% for every minute.
Similarly, PLC control systems prices have reduced drastically in last 5 years and have come with lots of features including open-connectivity, faster processing time and embedded predictive controls. India also has thousands of businesses and millions of engineers skilled to operate and program these systems, so service cost is definitely too low compared to developed nations like USA, UK, Europe etc. So now as you know that Automation & Digitization systems actually cost less, you should be definitely interested to implement at your factory.