If you're not adopting digital transformation, you're losing on immense opportunities

Digital transformation is on everyone's mind! A digital transformation strategy is a must for every organisation, regardless of its industry or size. Organisations that have embraced digitalisation are typically faster, more innovative, and closer to their customers. They can use agile methods and artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) based predictive analytical tools to achieve top quartile performance and develop solutions and services that are more perfectly tailored to their customers' needs. The result is not only more growth, but a decisive advantage over competitors. Digital trends like cybersecurity have become the need of the hour. Work-from-home (WFH), remote and virtual spaces shall remain the new normal. Artificial intelligence and machine learning have become the backbone of most digital tools.

In a recent conversation with ANIL BHATIA, VICE PRESIDENT AND MANAGING DIRECTOR FOR EMERSON'S AUTOMATION SOLUTIONS BUSINESS IN INDIA, Anil shares Emerson has been working with customers on digital transformation since before the trend had a name, and they have seen repeatedly how a practical approach – one that generates short-term wins with measurable gains that can be replicated for an enterprise-wide impact – is key to success in this evolving landscape across the globe.

Specifically talking about India's digital transformation framework, Anil believes that advanced analytics powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning are the critical enablers that will fuel the country's digital transformation. Organisations are leaning towards the idea of heavy investments in digital automation technologies such as sensors or connectivity devices, as well as software and IIoT applications.

A Trusted Partner

At Emerson, Anil takes pride as he shares that in the industrial sector Emerson is a trusted partner in their journey towards digital transformation. Emerson offers a suite of software solutions and IIoT application platforms to ensure that the right data is made accessible to the right person, at the right time to enable them to make the right decision. By using data-driven approaches to plant operations, which are the most energy-intensive processes, the ML- and AI-based analytics are the best place to start. Today, data from multiple host systems, both structured and unstructured, is being brought to a data lake wherein it can be analyzed in a secure way to help operators make the right decisions.

Make Important Pillars for being Self-Reliant

For decades, Emerson has been providing industries in India with highly engineered automation technology products and solutions that efficiently solve some of their biggest challenges – and it will continue to do so. The company's manufacturing facilities, engineering, and innovation centres in the country help to serve the needs of its customers in India and around the world. It's broader mission to revolutionize the Indian market, which is closely tied to support the government's Make in India, Digital India, Aatmanirbhar Bharat and Skill India initiatives, as they align with the company's mission of driving innovation, efficiency and fostering operational excellence.

"I strongly believe organizations should invest in the complete ecosystem to make India self-reliant. In fact, there are four important pillars that I feel are key to the growth of this ecosystem – Innovation, Engineering, Manufacturing, and Skill Development", says Anil.

Emerson has invested in all these four pillars and contributes to the overall Self-Reliant vision of India. Emerson has been a dedicated investor in India since the 1980s, and even after four decades of its presence here, India continues to be an important growth market for the company. The growing links between services and manufacturing, and a rapidly expanding domestic market have helped companies like Emerson to consider making India a manufacturing hub for their markets in this region. Anil tells that currently, the company is strengthening its presence locally with investments in facilities, such as its recently opened Emerson Integrated Manufacturing Centre (EIMC), in Talegaon, near Pune and the upcoming campus in Mahindra World City, Chennai. It also has plans to introduce additional Emerson products that will cater to Indian and global customer needs.

Taking further about The Emerson Integrated Manufacturing Centre (EIMC), it is one of Emerson's biggest projects in India till date. It is a strategic investment to support the use of local resources and talent for the growth of India's industrial ecosystem. Through this manufacturing centre it plans to not only strengthen its global automation manufacturing capabilities and network across the region, but also foster a high-tech workforce and operational excellence that will drive our ongoing commitment to exceptional customer service and future growth.

Developed with full support from the Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation (MIDC) and Invest India, the total build-out in Phase 1 is over 450,000 sq. ft. of manufacturing and engineering space with room for future expansion. Emerson inaugurated this facility virtually on December 16, 2020, with its Isolation Valves and Actuation Technologies businesses moving in first. In addition to its KTM™ Virgo ball valves and Keystone™ butterfly valves, it will also be manufacturing its prestigious Vanessa™ triple offset valves at this facility, while it continues to add new product and engineering capabilities to better serve its customers.  

Start SMALL, Think BIG and Move FAST

Anil opines that the industry has now accepted that digital transformation is no longer an option but a necessity and the organisations who do not embrace this will face extinction in this age of highly competitive business environment. Digitalisation is now seen as a must to drive revenues, efficiency, and profitability across various industry sectors. The big question is how to deploy this technology. He strongly believes Start SMALL, Think BIG and Move FAST will be the key strategy for deploying digital transformation in process automation.

As an automation technology solution provider, Emerson's solutions have always been scalable keeping in mind the future application. Thus Anil states that they continually seek to safeguard their customers' investments in their products and services. To help their customers towards their digital transformation journey, they have introduced the Digital Maturity Model Quick Index, which is a tool that lets businesses know where they are in their digital transformation journey in comparison to others in the industry. This is based on decades of Emerson domain expertise as well as the Smart Industry Readiness Index and the BioPhorum Digital Maturity Model.

According to Anil, "We are encouraging the executive leadership of the process industry to use our Digital Maturity index to understand where their organisations stand in various areas like risk and security, health, safety and environment, people and culture, business insights, and analytics, reliability and maintenance. This will help them identify specific operational improvement areas which will then yield high ROI and improve KPIs regarding their business value propositions."

Moreover, its flexible, integrated and scalable Plantweb™ digital ecosystem provides secure and robust real-time insight from pervasive sensing technologies.  A suite of analytical applications including Plantweb™ Insight and Plantweb™ Optics Analytics, use artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to provide smart persona-based real-time predictions to its customers and analytics optimize operational performance, asset health and plant safety across the enterprise.

Offering Practical Solutions

Anil emphasized that at Emerson, they believe in focusing on their customers and that is one of their core values. Emerson helps manufacturers achieve top quartile business performance through the industry's broadest and most comprehensive portfolio of technologies to measure, control, optimise and power their operations. They have the experience and expertise to solve their toughest problems. New technologies promise unprecedented improvement in business operations. Emerson is helping customers navigate the complex path to get there. Its dedicated digital transformation organisation brings together critical resources to help manufacturers develop and implement practical digital transformation strategies that deliver Top Quartile performance. They help customers not only establish a clear vision for their digital transformation, but also execute with confidence and realise measurable results at each step of their journey. Emerson's products, software, and services can cater to its customers' needs from the shop floor to an enterprise-wide solution.

Upskilling is the Key

Anil believes that with the growth of technology and digitalisation, jobs are getting highly specialised as more tasks and functions are being automated. Newer digitalisation technologies like cloud computing, big data, analytics and digital marketing provide career opportunities for many – and upskilling has become a necessity. Technologies and automation are replacing jobs or the nature of the work. Consequently, there is a learning gap that needs to be addressed by the educational sector. He emphasizes that skilling employees is important not just to keep up with the technological trends, but also to stay ahead of the competition. The type of skills required are changing as rapidly as industries and the economy itself. New digital technologies are disrupting the business landscape with major consequences for how industries are structured and economic activity occurs.