Envisioned to future-proofing digital transformation for the new manufacturing world, the second edition of the Pro MFG Digital Transformation Senior Leadership Roundtable, powered by Altair had Mr. Samip Mutha, Group CTO, Vice President & Group Head - Digital & Innovation, RPG Group as one of the esteemed speakers.
Elaborating on the key drivers of digital transformation within an organization, Mr. Samip Mutha mentioned that being a 'migrant' to the digital era himself after spending more than a decade in consulting, he has gained some insightful experiences upon joining the RPG Group. Mr. Mutha went on to say that "When I started my journey, digital was a fad. It was still a word that we were trying to understand as to what it means. To some extent, even today, people are trying to understand how the true leverage of digital in building new businesses can be used. "
Mr. Mutha emphasized that digital transformation encompasses four pillars, which have been further discussed as below:
Smart Manufacturing: It can start from a small mobile development to completely changing the business model. Today, there are only three plants from India, which are actually certified by the World Economic Forum as an allowed lighthouse project for use of industry 4.0 technology. So there's a humongous opportunity for the RPG Group to actually go into the Smart factory journey, Mr. Mutha explained.
Typically, a day in the manufacturing plant starts with an early 15-20 minutes meet, which is nothing but everybody coming together to decide what needs to be done, how the work needs to be allocated, who's absent, who's not there, which machine is down. So we've used the smart factory concept to actually democratize all that knowledge and made this meeting redundant. Mr. Mutha went on to say that, "Now, people come into the factory, they go to the machine and on the pad or the tablet, they will see which of the jobs are assigned to them."
Smart Product : We are today talking about moving to a cost per kilometer model in our tire business, which has completely changed. It is not about the IoT device that goes into the tire or it is not about the technology, but it is about the change in the business model which will happen because of the Cpk model. Any project which is IoT driven, the success of that is actually independent of technology. The success is actually how you change the business and how you reconfigure your entire business around the technology or the new business model, Mr. Mutha added.
Connected Customer: Digital gives you an opportunity to go closer to your customer, especially in the B2B businesses, and create a brand directly in the minds of the customer.
Digital at Work: This focus is on using digital to make the lives of the people better from a safety point of view. Hence, we are looking at Digital at work from using different technologies, which could include using VR.satellites, drones etc.
On a conclusive note, Mr Mutha reiterated that the success of digital lies in two things. Firstly, digital has to be done bottoms-up, because top down isn't easy. Secondly, digital is quite like a Lego block assembly wherein one needs to have people who not only understand the technology, but can put them together in a meaningful way and configure a solution. Nobody wants to implement an RFP or a blockchain, people are focused on the business outcome. And keeping the business outcome in mind, one needs to look at what technology or a combination of technologies will deliver on that business outcome. "Hence, looking at digital transformation from a Lego block assembly is an analogy I always love for digital because every day there will be these new blocks of new technology that will keep coming up", he concluded.
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