Umlaut: adds something on top

Dr. Ashish Mishra, CEO, Umlaut India

Can you give us a brief about umlaut and its operations in India?

Umlaut changes industrial and organizational advisory and fulfilment services from regular to special. Our special mark is to help our clients to change the quality of their technological capabilities and culture for the better. We add value on top of their services, products and entire organizational fabric.

umlaut is head-quartered in Germany and has over two plus decades of experience in engineering and consulting. We established our Indian subsidiary in 2006, in Bengaluru. The global engineering center in Bengaluru is involved in solving complex engineering problems for companies in aerospace, defence, automotive, shipping, rail and telecom industries. These industries are based on traditional engineering and our digitalization practices enables them in adopting newer technologies like AI, ML, Data Analytics, Automation, Industry 4.0, 5G and Cloud enabled services. This leads to innovation in their products and services, optimization of processes and making them more efficient and competitive.

How do you differentiate from other engineering service providers?

umlaut leverages deep domain knowledge, cross-industry expertise, engineering mind set and innovative technologies to serve clients end-to-end. For more than two decades, we have been supporting global OEMs in the design, development, manufacturing, and maintenance of their cutting-edge products. We have accumulated vast amounts of knowledge and expertise in this journey.

From classical engineering to new age technologies, our solutions are customized rather than standardized. We offer a balanced mix of qualities like ability and agility. Our customers see us as a global powerhouse with agility of startup who adds value.

Digitalization is a buzz topic for everyone. How do you define it?

Digitalization is of course the adoption of digital technology to help a company stay relevant in today’s time.

Each company’s needs and level of digital maturity are different. For some it still means “going paperless”, for others it’s about transforming entire business model. Digital transformation is now a race to take on new technologies, to find innovative solutions for traditional problems and new ones alike.

Some companies do not realize the risk and jump on the bandwagon without knowing the eventual destination. Informed decisions will require an analysis of ones’ digital status and a strategic roadmap of how technology can advance their organization, businesses and benefit end customers.

How does umlaut approach digitalization?

umlaut digitalization approach gives equal emphasis on technology as well as organizational culture and governance.

Organizations need to adapt to the speed of technological developments and create a digital culture that includes their people, making them pillars of the transformational process. Defining the objectives and implementation is key. We successfully guide companies through their digital transformation by combining technological, organizational and conceptual expertise and developing custom solutions with measurable success criteria.

Who are your key customers in India and what services do you offer for them?

Our customer list consists of global OEMs and their ER&D centers in India and Tier 1 suppliers across industries.

For aerospace, defence, automotive, rail and shipping industries, we offer end-to-end product design and development services including mechanical, embedded and software engineering, digitization of manufacturing, quality and supply chain management as well as technical publication and value engineering.

Among other things, we are providing engineering design support to a European truck and luxury car manufacturer. Working on infotainment testing and validation for passenger cars. Helping an Indian two-wheeler OEM with their weight optimization program.  We are closely associated with the European aerospace and defence OEM for design and analysis of composite structures, mechanical and electrical systems and manufacturing engineering. We are also helping this customer in their digital transformation journey as part of their global team.

Leveraging our German pedigree, we are able to enhance the engineering process and project management capabilities of domestic projects. We are working with Indian ship building company on PLM implementation and upgrading their technical documentation standards. Deploying Industry 4.0 solutions to enhance their production capabilities. We are proud to say that we are working with global OEM as Indian offset partner and are also supporting Indian defense PSUs in their contribution to Atmanirbhar Bharat.  

You have a significant presence in the telecommunication vertical. Can you elaborate on this?

For telecommunication, we design, manage, monitor, test and optimize the telecommunication infrastructure. We ensure its security. We are at the forefront of new technologies like 5G, Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Mobile Edge Computing. Our crowd data provide insights on consumer experience worldwide. Our assessments of mobile networks’ performance in over 120 countries are accepted as the de facto industry standard.

Benchmarking is our territory, to deep-dive a bit -  More than 200 mobile networks, in 120+ countries are being evaluated by our unique scoring methodology & framework. We are benchmarking and optimizing the network for the leading telecom operator in India using our 2020 framework. We are assessing and optimizing their network based on pre & post drive tests, crowd data and operator’s OSS performance data.

Our public benchmarks as well as the certificate benchmarks help network operators to demonstrate how well they deliver wireless connections to consumers, business users and enterprises while revealing the areas of improvement. It is designed to evaluate and objectively compare the performance and service quality of networks. They are published in several countries on an annual basis.

What is next for umlaut in India?

India is a very important and strategic market for us. We are investing in developing high tech capabilities. We are growing by 20% yoy and continue to scale our workforce. We recently organized a start-up collaboration campaign and have shortlisted a couple of promising companies, working on next-gen solutions, to get them onboard with umlaut.

We are developing industry specific software products here. Our recently launched product suite includes Illustration tool and IETM to create and manage next generation technical publications for aerospace & defense sector in compliance with S1000D standards. umlaut WMT is a complete digital workflow management tool that allows users to customize and manage workflow for manufacturing units. Our knowledge management platform eBridgeNow is a holistic online solution that supports knowledge management and training for corporates and educational institutes.

We are moving from services to end-to-end solutions offering and translating it to a tangible value for our customers. Adding something on top.

www.umlaut.com

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