The summit discussed some of the key issues such as Industry 4.0, disruptive technologies, organisational hurdles, impact of GST, etc

 

German Engineering Federation (VDMA), which completed 125 years, recently organised its mechanical engineering summit in Bangalore that was attended by more than 220 people. The summit, headed by Rajesh Nath, Managing Director, VDMA India, had key industry speakers discussing topics such as Industry 4.0, disruptive technologies, manufacturing and production changes, organisational hurdles, and the impact of GST.  India is the second-largest sales market in Asia for the German engineering industry.

 

The summit commenced with a welcome from Rajesh Nath, who spoke about the history of VDMA starting from its inception in 1892 and the celebration of its 125 years in 2017. VDMA India had organised business forums in major cities in India and has been playing an active role in spreading awareness on Industry 4.0 in the Indian industry. The Business Climate Survey among the German companies was conducted by VDMA for the first time in India. The outcome was; 47 percent of the participants said the climate is good, whereas 48 percent considered it normal and only  5 percent termed it slower than last year.

 

The inaugural session  

 

The Chief Guest R V Deshpande, Minister, Large and Medium Scale Industries, Karnataka congratulated VDMA on completing 125 years. The State of Karnataka is a keen supporter of Make in India and is encouraging more companies to set up their manufacturing bases in Karnataka. The minister also thanked all the VDMA member companies, who have already established themselves in Karnataka and also extended a welcome to all those members who would plan to invest in Karnataka in the future. The Minister requested for more German companies to start operations in Karnataka keeping in mind that India will have the largest population in the world by 2025.

 

Margit Hellwig-Boette, Consul General, Federal Republic of Germany, Bangalore congratulated Rajesh Nath, who is to be accorded the German Cross of Merit - the highest German civilian honour for the promotion of Indo-German trade. She considered VDMA as an excellent platform of providing network for German companies and helping them to establish their businesses in India. She mentioned that in the field of mechanical engineering, VDMA plays a very important role in establishing network between their members.

Ulrich Ackermann, Managing Director, Foreign Trade Division within VDMA Frankfurt was extremely delighted to meet the members and gave an overview on the history of VDMA. The journey of VDMA started on November 15 in 1892 from Berlin. At present VDMA has around 3,250 members.

 

The cluster effect

 

The Minister launched the VDMA India app and released the VDMA special publication commemorating 125 years. The dignitaries also released a report on ‘Industrial Clusters in India’ prepared by, The Knowledge Partner, Euro Asia Consulting.

 

The first technical session commenced by Rajeev Singh, Partner Consulting, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India LLP, who spoke on ‘Business impact of GST on manufacturing industry’, who gave an overview on GST from a business perceptive and its relevance for the manufacturing industry. The next speaker was Suvir Davda, Director, Global Market Corporate Services, The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited (HSBC), who gave an overview on macroeconomic trends and digitisation. Thereafter, Ravi Sastry, CFO, Festo India Pvt Ltd, shared his views on the steps taken by Festo to address GST issues since the company viewed the new tax regime as a business transformation exercise. During the technical session, a report ‘Key sector overview in India’ prepared by market research partner BDB India Pvt Ltd was released.

 

Digitalisation gaining traction

 

The second technical session addressed the topic ‘Digitalisation: India advantage’, by Gautam Dutta, Senior Director Marketing, Siemens Industry Software India Ltd (Digital Factory Division). He explained the three areas that are disrupting and transforming the mechanical engineering industry: Internet of Things (IoT), robotics and big data. There are two sides from a manufacturer perspective, the machine building perspective and the product perspective. Dutta explained the various parameters involved in both these perspectives in the manufacturing world. The decision making in product development, is the integration of the mechanical and electronics parameters. 

 

The methods in manufacturing, involves the bill of materials (BoM), has got transformed to the ‘Bill of Process’ and the various methods involved in manufacturing of a product. The ‘holy grail’ of manufacturing, which is, making products from the same production line, is moving to discrete process ie products are assembled at one station, thus enabling mass-customisation of products. The mechanical engineering industry expects its personnel to learn, unlearn and re-learn the methods, processes and techniques in manufacturing and product building. Dutta explained the process of dynamic scheduling, quality management and creating big data cloud atmosphere from the data drawn from IoT devices.

 

3D printing: The game changer

 

The next presentation was on “Additive manufacturing (AM): The game changer for the manufacturing industry” by Vishwanath Godavarty, Sales Account Manager (India, South Asia), Materialise Software. Godavarthy explained the advantages of AM like lower costs, better design, customisation, sustainability, and emergence of new business models due to AM. The most popular materials used are the polymer and metals. The polymer based AM led to the growth of several companies initially in the 3D printing space and today the laser sintering method is deployed for metals. Today, the popular utilisation of the AM is in the medical field, in the production of various complicated and customised devices and prosthetics for the medical applications. Godavarthy mentioned that the AM market during the period 2010-14 was growing at 30 percent to Euro 1.0 billion and is expected to multiply by two to seven times to reach Euro 12 to 20 billion by 2020, depending upon the pace of adoption of AM by the mechanical engineering industry.

 

Rajesh Nath moderated a panel discussion on ‘Coping with growth and overcoming challenges in manufacturing’. The participants in the discussion were Marc Jarrault, Managing Director, Lapp India; Georg Graf, CEO, Freudenberg Regional Corporate Centre; Nitin Vyas, Managing Director, Beumer India, Sunil K Gupta, CEO & Managing Director, KION India and Rajesh Mishra, Managing Director, Vulkan Technologies. The discussions commenced by Rajesh Nath, asking each of the panel members to explain the growth in their organisation during their tenure and the ways and means used to overcome internal and external challenges faced by their organisations during this period.

 

The various hurdles/challenges that the panel leaders overcame during their career stint in their organisations were: skills training, gender diversity, meeting global standards of manufacturing & quality processes while locally manufacturing in India, integration challenges of acquired company due to poor skills & quality of the supply chain partners of the acquired company, Challenges on customer side in adoption of technology, Indian taxation and legal system, Indian infrastructure impeding logistics and movement, labour issues, poor vocational training system, price sensitiveness of the Indian customer/market, bridging aspirations of the older generation people with the millennial, passing knowledge from the older to newer generation, attrition of skilled labour and adopting/suiting German products to Indian needs. The panel leaders displayed innovative methods and processes adopted by their organisation in overcoming the specific challenges in their 

respective organisations.

 

The summit concluded with an evening presentation by Jai Khurana, Sr. Vice President and Head of Business Development, Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone Limited, providing an overview of the 

Adani Group.