Sudeep is a MBA Management, IT, Statistics, Computer Science & Economics degree holder from the Alliance University. Prior to joining Teamlease, he was the RegionalBusiness Manager for Adecco India.

As the world is moving towards the next phase of industrial revolution with the introduction of progressive analytics, digitalisation, adoption of artificial intelligence, IoT, Automation, and Robotics across the industry value chain, manufacturing sector is set to grow exponentially. Various government interventions like ‘Make in India’ program, National Policy on Electronics, Modified Special Incentive Package Scheme, revised income tax rate for SMEs with Rs.250 crore turnover, and increased export incentives for MSMEs is further boosting the growth of this segment in the country. This along with India’s rise in the ranks for Ease of Doing Business has not only gained the attention of foreign investors, but also attracted companies to setup manufacturing hubs across country. The sector has also benefitted through the Skill India mission. Companies across the world see this as an opportunity and are inspired by not just the policies and affordable labour, but also are recognizing India as the destination for skilled labour. The government has put its efforts in the right direction to accelerate the growth of this industry, and provisions made in the recently concluded interim budget present huge opportunities. In fact it primarily indicates two key aspects getting better at what we do, and becoming the best in it within the next 5-7 years, with the right investments in technology. All these initiatives have resulted in a significant rise in talent demand and production when compared to data from 2017 -2018. The year looks promising for the sector and some of the trends that will be adopted by manufacturing sector are:

1.Digitization & Automationin core production will be the X factor for the growth across all firms irrespective of their size. Adoption of digitization and automation is expected to lead to higher productivity, thus leading to demand for newly skilled staff in shop floors and also design sites. There will be an increase in demand by 10-12 percent of skilled staffs who will again require upskilling with advent of IIoT in the next phase.

In the new Digital India, Industrial Internet of things(IIoT) will lead to manufacturing of products in smarter ways. It will also help meet the challenges of today and even the future. It is important that there is a strategy, structure, goal and team

aligned to it or else, it may impact the Return on Investments.

Firstly, the primary focus should be on real time dashboards, wherein the data derived from simplistic processes can be showcased highlighting the status of subsystems, functional efficiency and correlated work schedules. The connectivity and efficiency of devices and assembly lines can then be represented in a hierarchical structure by means of IIoT. This leads to data integration and storage of the same. The data collectors then systematically access the stored data in realtime basis and generate dashboards. Secondly, IIoT solution can collect data from ERP systems, energy management systems, partner ecosystems (suppliers, vendors) and third party systems. All this data is then aggregated into Cloud based or on campus solutions leading to enhancement of the operational excellence, reducing wastage, system transmission losses and tracking. Indepth analysis of the historical data along with ML algorithms can create actionable insights for predictive maintenance, wastage and error detection, enabling the leaders to identify the root causes which are hindrances to optimum productivity. Furthermore, this also helps in terms of decision making, course correction and manpower utilization inferences.

The manufacturing sector needs more of triparty efforts to understand the gap in terms of demand vs.supply

2.PPP between Government, Educationalists & Industries:The manufacturing sector needs more of triparty efforts to understand the gap in terms of demand vs. supply. First and foremost, the course curriculum needs to be transformed depending on the type of changes of technological demands in job market as required by employers. The students need to be exposed to six months of industrial experience as staff and the Government should come up with schemes to sponsor the fees of the top talent, creating a viral interest from more students.

3.Increase in Women Participation:Gender diversity needs to be looked at the shop floor. More and more companies will look at training sessions, backed by good review mechanisms and performance management along with safety, security and transport to improve better gender diversity.

4.Demand for SmarPlant Tools Workers in Engineering Sector: With a series of new projects, there is a demand for tech talent for executing projects either onsite or offsite, like Civil Site Engineer Mechanical Site Engineer, Electrical Site Engineer, and Instrumentation Site Engineer, having skills of progress monitoring and quality check apart from skills in MS office, AutoCAD and indepth domain expertise. Engineering companies are looking for smart tool skilled staff with the education qualification like Degree in Civil, Mechanical, Electrical and Chemical engineering, having detailed experiences of working on Pipenet Analysis, Static & Rotary, Package equipment, Stress Analysis, STADD Analysis, and ETAP Analysis. Needless to say, automation and its adoption is on a rise. Hence, there will be a huge requirement for job roles like Modeller, Draftsman & Administrators with 1-3 years of experience with knowledge in Digitization Projects using various tools such as SmarPlant tools (S3D, SPI, SPPID, SPEL), Bentley tools(P&ID, Instrumentation, Electrical & 3D), AVEVA tools (P&ID, Electrical, Instrumentation, 3D), and Siemens COMOS.

Overall, there will be an increased demand of 10-12 percent in the engineering sector, and with digitization at its peak, this is just the beginning for a Smarter Engineered India, wherein we will make, assemble and commission more products in the country. There will be a 12-15 percent increase in the demand for skilled staff in the Engineering and Industrial sectors, and it is important to know the skills required to enhance career and the tech demand of today. IIoT is the way forward and it shall make India proud in its true essence of ‘Make in India’.