India's economic revival is predicated on it being able to revive job growth. And no other sector is more critical to this than manufacturing
Speaking at the Manufacturing panel of the The Next Wave of Cloud Innovation series of industry-focused roundtable discussions organized by Forbes India, in association with Google Cloud, panelists agreed that the sector needs to strike the right balance where technology not only saves costs but also adds value.
The answer perhaps lies in Business 101, opined Google Cloud’s Vivek Subramaniam. “The need of the hour is having a deep understanding of what the customer needs and what the customer wants,” said the Principal Architect for Manufacturing at the Alphabet Inc., unit.
“What we are doing with other enterprises is we already have tool sets around e-commerce or the Google Marketing Cloud platform that we have and use our prowess in data analytics, data sciences to process these large sets of information and provide very specific customer insights on the behavior, needs and the interventions organizations take,” Vivek said. “That ensures that the customers get the right product or the right service at the desired time they want.”
On the supply side technology can solve multiple issues like those that crept up during the COVID-19 pandemic, Vivek said. For example, Google Cloud’s supply chain solution called “Supply Chain Twin” provides a real-time visibility of the entire supply chain system, helping identify bottlenecks and issues early on, Vivek added. “So you can minimize any disruption that may happen.”
No one knows the need for such a solution better than Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd. Chief General Manager for Information Systems Jayant Gupta and Sanjay Kumar Suri, General Manager - IS Technology, Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd. The sheer size of their supply chains could be considered overwhelming as they span sales, sourcing, refining, distribution storage and sales.
With more than 80 terminals and depots and almost 90,000 retail outlets and 6000 plus distributors, HPCL needs to make the entire supply chain work seamlessly when a customer walks in, Jayant explained. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the adoption of world-class technology at the nearly 50-year old state-run refiner.