Ajit Kulkarni, Vice President and India Market Leader, AVEVA, 0
Amid a highly competitive business landscape, sustainability has become a linchpin driver for success. We are currently witnessing this in India, with 74 percent of India’s tech and business leaders indicating technology is key to achieving sustainability goals.
Focusing on sustainability enables businesses to create value for their stakeholders while conserving the planet and supercharging operational performance. Today’s industrial winners will be those that embrace highly specialized digital technologies to optimize performance and resilience.
Research shows that globally, 75 percent of leaders will prioritize industrial intelligence solutions for their organization in the next year — indicating a significant shift in the landscape. In particular, future industry leaders will leverage application-specific artificial intelligence (AI) in the cloud to help them grow revenue and optimize production efficiency and sustainability.
Such companies are already turning to digitization to dramatically reduce operational risk through the use of predictive maintenance and AI-driven scheduling to boost supply chain economics. As of 2023, over 54 percent of manufacturing firms in India have integrated AI-based analytics into critical business operations such as quality control, supply chain logistics, and equipment maintenance.
What’s clear is that AI isn’t one thing or one technology – it’s an expansive term that describes different mathematical techniques with the ability to recognize patterns, detect anomalies, provide expert guidance, and make predictions about what might happen next. When these capabilities are specifically primed for industrial operations, the benefits are exponential.
By connecting an organization’s data and then utilizing AI to gain insights into operations, it’s possible to establish better ways of working, operate much more efficiently, and create environmentally conscious industrial workspaces.
Specialized AI will Supercharge Businesses
In the coming years, advancing AI will drive huge wins across all industries – slashing fuel consumption, improving carbon capture, lowering emissions, and maximizing equipment lifecycles. This transformation is already underway in India — between 2022 and 2023, industrial products and manufacturing sectors saw a 20 percent jump in AI adoption, the highest increase across all industries, signaling a decisive shift toward intelligent automation.
AI-powered solutions are already helping industrial businesses engineer faster through suggestive design and simulation; operate at optimal production levels for
maximum efficiency; provide decision support to connected workers; reduce waste for maximum yield; and recognize potential equipment breakdowns before they can occur.
By leveraging Industrial AI, companies gain the knowledge and agility to respond to changing conditions in real-time for greater safety, profitability, and sustainability. It’s also possible for companies to gain insights into engineering and operations to develop performance calculations and assess the impact AI is having on improving CO2 emissions.
The Future of Sustainability is Automated
Ultimately, AI technologies have begun to evolve from task-based to objective-driven with human supervision. This is an industry leap forward that offers huge business benefits. The use of AI in products and services enhances efficiency and productivity while tackling complex challenges.
In India, this technology has been effectively applied across various sectors, including finance, healthcare, transportation, and manufacturing. AI plays a crucial role in addressing new challenges and creating opportunities for both emerging startups and established businesses looking to innovate. Several prominent Indian companies are incorporating AI-driven predictive maintenance, quality control, and supply chain optimization into their operations to reduce downtime and improve process efficiency.
AI goals can now be set and information can be dynamically linked in context. For example, by leveraging in-house company data alongside highly specialized and customized Large Language Models (LLMs), an employee can ask natural language questions of the system with minimal setup required. The user can ask objective-driven questions, like ‘Can I see a 3D model of my wind farm?’ or ‘Which wind farm has the lowest energy output this week?’
Or another case in point: companies can use specialized AI-assisted vision technology to increase situational awareness and prevent machine failure. It’s now possible to employ infrared or thermal cameras to locate visual anomalies, or even identify if an operator is missing a hard hat.
Companies around the world are already realising massive sustainability and productivity benefits through applied industrial AI. Still, it must be noted that AI is not a replacement for human intellect, rather it should be viewed as an enabling tool and partner. AI will continue to evolve in stages. It is destined to progress from today’s software that assists humans, to software that works alongside humans – workers who are deeply connected to the technologies through easy-to-use interfaces.
In this evolving world, industrial businesses will become smarter, faster, and ultimately better. For India, this transformation presents a pivotal opportunity to emerge as a global manufacturing hub, with its manufacturing sector poised to reach $ 1 trillion by 2025-26. By harnessing digital intelligence to optimize efficiency and sustainable practices, India can emerge as a leader in the global value chain — transforming into an innovative powerhouse that can shape tomorrow’s industrial landscape.
By leveraging Industrial AI, companies gain the knowledge and agility to respond to changing conditions in real-time for greater safety, profitability, and sustainability. It’s also possible for companies to gain insights into engineering and operations to develop performance calculations and assess the impact AI is having on improving CO2 emissions.
The Future of Sustainability is Automated
Ultimately, AI technologies have begun to evolve from task-based to objective-driven with human supervision. This is an industry leap forward that offers huge business benefits. The use of AI in products and services enhances efficiency and productivity while tackling complex challenges.
Companies around the world are already realising massive sustainability and productivity benefits through applied industrial AI
In India, this technology has been effectively applied across various sectors, including finance, healthcare, transportation, and manufacturing. AI plays a crucial role in addressing new challenges and creating opportunities for both emerging startups and established businesses looking to innovate. Several prominent Indian companies are incorporating AI-driven predictive maintenance, quality control, and supply chain optimization into their operations to reduce downtime and improve process efficiency.
AI goals can now be set and information can be dynamically linked in context. For example, by leveraging in-house company data alongside highly specialized and customized Large Language Models (LLMs), an employee can ask natural language questions of the system with minimal setup required. The user can ask objective-driven questions, like ‘Can I see a 3D model of my wind farm?’ or ‘Which wind farm has the lowest energy output this week?’
Or another case in point: companies can use specialized AI-assisted vision technology to increase situational awareness and prevent machine failure. It’s now possible to employ infrared or thermal cameras to locate visual anomalies, or even identify if an operator is missing a hard hat.
Companies around the world are already realising massive sustainability and productivity benefits through applied industrial AI. Still, it must be noted that AI is not a replacement for human intellect, rather it should be viewed as an enabling tool and partner. AI will continue to evolve in stages. It is destined to progress from today’s software that assists humans, to software that works alongside humans – workers who are deeply connected to the technologies through easy-to-use interfaces.
In this evolving world, industrial businesses will become smarter, faster, and ultimately better. For India, this transformation presents a pivotal opportunity to emerge as a global manufacturing hub, with its manufacturing sector poised to reach $ 1 trillion by 2025-26. By harnessing digital intelligence to optimize efficiency and sustainable practices, India can emerge as a leader in the global value chain — transforming into an innovative powerhouse that can shape tomorrow’s industrial landscape.