As India is poised to be a manufacturing hub primarily due to its growing domestic demand, many multinationals are establishing their manufacturing units here. There is the vast domestic market with surging wages, as well as uncertainties and cost economics from global angles that guides this preference. Also, policies and plans by the government have boosted India's promise as a pivotal manufacturing destination. 

However, in order to remain competitive in the global arena, Indian manufacturing sector has to really gear up as competition is intense and low cost destinations are always around the next corner. Factors such as labour and capital productivity, infrastructure, environmental clearances are critical to the manufacturing sector, but the most significant is technology.

Technology will play a major role to not only improve efficiency, productivity and quality but also cut costs and reduce material expenditure and energy consumption. As technology is bound to change the way manufacturing businesses operate, it will also have an effect throughout the operating cycle - from product design, development, and supply chain management to distribution.

Organisations have already started moving from legacy systems and most of them have adopted ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning). The challenge however is integration of IT and to train and enable an optimum man-machine interface which convinces management and employees to adopt new systems and processes and supports smooth roll-out of the same. 

Adoption of ERP in manufacturing has matured after decades of investment and all the departments from production and sales to operations and finance are connected by a common IT enabled platform, thus giving an integrated view of operations to the company's management.

The emergence of new age technologies specifically SMAC will further add to the transformation of the manufacturing sector. Here is a glimpse of how each technology will have its impact on manufacturing.

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The author is Global Delivery Head, Blue Star Infotech.