With the onset of industry 4.0, Indian manufacturing industry is set for major transformation in terms of doing business operations and currently 54 per cent of the companies have implemented AI and analytics for business functions, said a PwC India survey. “Indian manufacturing companies currently prefer to adopt one standardised digital solution across plants compared to global companies which prefer one standardised digital solution with different functionalities or module,” the report said. It further added that the other 38 per cent of the companies do not have any plans to adopt digital technology for their businesses.
PwC India conducted a survey wherein it interviewed the CXOs of organisations in the domestic market, including multinational companies (MNCs) to gain insights into the digital transformation trends of the manufacturing sector. In the report “Reimagining Digital Factories of Tomorrow”, PwC India said, “Digital champions from across the six sectors in India believe that being resilient, transparent and sustainable will prepare them for future growth. However, they also opine that greater innovation and faster time to market will help them to stay relevant in the competitive landscape in the coming days.”
For the technology deployment use cases, it said, the average payback period is less than three years. “Shorter payback periods encourage organisations to invest in technological solutions,” it said, while adding that lack of planning for aligning digital transformation with the organisation’s objectives and implementing digital technology remains a greater challenge. The report stated that companies in India that invested at least 3 per cent of their entire sales in digital transformation had a higher proportion of high returns. Further, it said that Indian companies are used to focusing more on people, policies and mindset while the global companies prefer building up the right system for driving any transformation.
The survey also indicated that collaborating with the right team who can devise a custom digital transformation strategy which is suitable for the organisation, and working with the right enablers to implement the strategy is important to increase the return on investment (ROI). “Organisations will also need to determine aspects of tangible returns apart from the financial outcomes to ensure that implementing digital technology has a holistic, long-term and sustainable impact on the business,” said Sudipta Ghosh, Partner, Industrial Products Sector and Data and Analytics Practice Leader, PwC India. “The return on investments will be governed to a large extent by how organisations are using the data to generate insights and take timely decisions.” he added.
Going forward
While learning from success stories within the industry may provide the insights on where to begin on framing a transformation blueprint, it is important to take into consideration a wide variety of contingencies and probable pitfalls from failure case studies. “Though many companies have implemented fit-for-future technologies in some capacity to solve operational challenges, only few are able to implement it successfully across the value-chain. Adopting digital technologies effectively at scale requires the commitment of the leadership team besides a clear roadmap for implementation and skilled people,” said Ankur Basu, Partner and Digital Operations Leader, PwC India.