The next wave of innovation
Faced with rapidly changing conditions, how can manufacturing organisations remain market-aligned and synchronised with manufacturing and design? Delivery of first-part-right, right-by-design, right-on-time, and intended customer experience are critical desired outcomes. The questions that call for attention are: What processes in product design, supply chain, shop floor management, in-process quality and production need to change? How can manufacturers leverage information explosion?

There is mounting data to reflect the potential of mobile and internet penetration in India. Even though internet penetration is only 16 percent in absolute terms, India is on a par with the U.S. according to a report by Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and IMRB International. The report estimates 243 million internet users in India by June 2014, overtaking the US as the world's second largest internet base after China. With more people getting online, the organisations that are able to exploit this will be at the leading edge.

Enterprise systems are fast becoming table stakes, so the next big push would be to exploit convergence of social and mobile technologies for customer data and sensory data from intelligent products, intelligent machines as well as environment (for example, weather and traffic data). These new information sources can create opportunities for service-based business models as well.

Cloud technologies enable even the smallest of organisations to adopt sophisticated solutions without high upfront cost and effort.

Being innovative yet pragmatic
Making the most of this opportunity requires manufacturers to visualise opportunities across four overarching themes: Connected products, process excellence, data & analytics, and organisational change management at the grassroots level.

Connected products and machines
While connected products pose challenges of increased cost and complexity of embedding chips and sensors into products, they offer great potential to glean quality data. For example, leveraging real-time product/machine performance data in preventive maintenance can assist manufacturers in reducing downtime and improving productivity.

Connected product data is used for three purposes: Product identification, tracking and tracing, and product condition monitoring. Track-and-trace initiatives are fairly well established, thanks to the prevalence of bar coding, RFID, and so on. In a Cognizant study about informed manufacturing, nearly 82 percent of the respondents said they were using these technologies for supply chain visibility. Comparatively, automation of product condition monitoring is not as prevalent yet, but is gaining ground, with around 53 percent respondents stating they had at least partially automated it. 

While most companies use product data internally, there is growing recognition that sharing relevant data with external stakeholders will yield significant benefits across the supply chain.