Companies Need to Automate for Achieving Competence in Manufacturing

Indian Machine Tool Manufacturers’ Association (IMTMA) organized “Symposium on Smart Automation 2019” on 21^st November 2019 at Bangalore International Exhibition Centre (BIEC), Bengaluru.

The Symposium featured presentations and discussions on various facets of automation with case studies and a panel discussion. Over 300 delegates from around 125 companies participated in the Symposium.

Symposium on Smart Automation 2019 was inaugurated by Mr. Easwaran Subramanian, Partner, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India LLP. In his keynote address on “Smart Automation in the Indian Context”, Mr. Subramanian called upon industries to capitalize on new technologies for targeting self-steering production systems. He said industries should think big, start small, act fast for deploying smart automation solutions and for achieving rapid results. He said, “Smart factories enable companies to be more responsive to customer demands, achieve greater operational efficiency, and speed up product innovation. Setting the vision for smart automation, he said that today’s factories need to adopt smart automation to become factories of the future.”

Highlighting the importance of automation, Mr. Indradev Babu, President, IMTMA said, “The path for realising the Vision of ‘Make in India’, calls for a paradigm shift in our manufacturing process. This necessitates the adoption of automation and smart technologies not only in our respective manufacturing facility but also across the entire manufacturing value chain.”

The sessions were divided into parallel tracks: Robotics & Automation, and Digitalisation, which ran concurrently, followed by a panel discussion on Overcoming Obstacles in the Journey to Smart Automation.

Thought-provoking presentations made by technocrats at the Symposium covered subjects such as workplace automation, smart automation in assembly and testing, using augmented reality for maintenance and operation, smart automation in tool and work holding, gantry and robot-based automation, digitisation of 3D measurement, smart sensors, automated information capture and analysis, machine transparency, collaborative robot, affordable smart automation including MSMEs, case studies and applications - sustainable high performance sorting system and fully automatic faucet grinding system.

IMTMA also organized technical tours for delegates to witness automation on the shopfloor of leading manufacturing companies, a day before the Symposium on 20^th November 2019. Delegates visited Sansera Engineering, SKF India, TVS Motor Company and Titan Engineering and Automation.