While many Americans and Europeans are being buffeted by inflation and job worries, automation industry employees in India by and large remain firmly in control of their fate, enjoying rising salaries and strong demands for their services.
According to Dedham, Mass.-based ARC Advisory Group Inc., “India’s manufacturing industry, which is spurring the country's GDP (gross domestic product) growth, is undergoing a major transformation. It is moving away from the growth driven by investment and demand to productivity-linked growth. India’s manufacturing is scaling up and beginning to seek global competitiveness through the wider application of automation and manufacturing IT (information technology). And this trend is contributing to the robust growth of automation and enterprise markets.”
To make use of this situation, the Automation Industry Association of India (AIA), the forum representing industrial automation companies in India, has offered to share its expertise with government and engineering colleges in establishing global working quality Centers of Automation.
Grooming engineers
“Automation is a well-established technology, both in the manufacturing sector and infrastructure. India’s hopes of emerging as an economic superpower depends a lot on how we groom our engineers to leverage this technology. By transferring global quality learning processes, we can convert a much larger percent of the emerging manpower to more enriching careers,” said Sunil Khanna, President, AIA, while speaking at a recent Industry–Academia Interface meet. The event was part of a recently launched initiative by AIA called Campus Connect.
“Our educational Centers of Excellence are being developed to create new applications rather than be seen as a low-cost substitute to solve routine technical problems,” said M S Vijayaraghavan during the even. Vijayaraghavan is advisor, Information Security, for the Government of India, and executive director for the Society for Electronic Transactions & Security (SETS).
It is a fact that automation is reducing the number of manufacturing jobs worldwide, not just in the United States. Those who have lost jobs in manufacturing and automation, say industry observers, often can't easily transition into other careers. But India is well-positioned to outsource tech work, hence creating more jobs, they say.
Cutting-edge awareness
Since inception, AIA has been working toward the goals of increasing awareness and acceptability amongst users on cutting-edge automation technologies to aid the Indian industry leverage these for greater productivity, efficiency, quality, safety and consistency—parameters that form the key to global competitiveness.
“The association has also taken initiatives to foster best practices within the automation industry by encouraging innovation to promote the cause of Indian industry. Now, we are turning our attention to upgrade the way automation is taught and learned in colleges,” Khanna added.
About the author
Uday Lal Pai, [email protected], is a freelance journalist based in India.
