MSMEs to step up and embrace digital technologies

June 9, 2022 6:09 pm

Be it a machine shop or a foundry or any other factory, sfHawk can integrate with any kind of machines and equipment.

Amitabh Chaturvedi, Founder Director, InnovaPoint Infotech was quite jubilant in stating to OEM Update that recently, sfHawk helped a client improve the shop efficiency by 8 percent in two months.

Special features of SFHawk in Manufacturing Intelligence and its applications 

sfHawk is an end to end smart factory solution which integrates with the ERP system to show you the complete and real-time picture of your entire factory. Be it a machine shop or a foundry or any other factory, sfHawk can integrate with any kind of machines and equipment. Right from raw material to the finished good packing, we cover the material movement, traceability of parts and processes, quality, efficiency, and much more. Being an IT company working with global clients for 17 years, our focus is on scalable and wireless architecture,

data security, data migration to ERP. Accuracy of data, ease of use, faster implementations, innovative features and other such aspects are something that has been appreciated by our clients.

Which latest trends and innovation are impacting the automation industry? 

Well, we are definitely seeing more and more factories implementing or initiating digitization projects. We are seeing many requirements for parts and process traceability. We have recently implemented a solution at a big automotive machine shop where we integrated the gauges in real-time and stopped low-quality parts moving further along the line. Such new ideas and use cases are being implemented. More and more success stories are being discussed now. We have implemented a traceability solution for a vendor of a European car maker where we are capturing real time machining parameters for every engine block. 

How do you perceive manufacturing with Industry 4.0/ 5.0 to optimize production?

 We all know Industry 4.0 brings tremendous opportunity for factories. Opportunity to increase efficiency, increase quality, increase machine life and to reduce loses, reduce product cost, reduce quality recalls etc. Talking about optimizing production, features like real time production monitoring, real time alerts, cycle time reduction, OEE simulations are helping production department. Recently, sfHawk helped a client improve the shop efficiency by 8 percent in two months. 

What future do you envisage for the smart factories evolving with sensors, AR and autonomous robotics implementation? 

Factories are becoming hi-tech, they have more data to take proactive and faster decisions. We are going to see lot of process changes, processes that are less human dependent and more on intelligent automation. Supervisors will be able to focus only on critical areas; lot of regular decision making will be handled by the systems. The cohesive system created by the sensors data will help increase the life of industrial assets. More and more machine tool builders are working in this direction, we are in helping some of them. We should expect improvements in peripheral products (gauges, dispensers, cutting tools etc.) as their real time usage data will be available for their manufacturers. More and more remote/ online service will improve the service levels and productivity. These are just some areas I have mentioned, the impact and improvement scope is huge.

Is it possible to achieve localization and raise manufacturing output to support export demand?

We are working with multiple auto component organizations exporting to various countries. We do see demands are increasing day by day. Obviously, using the digital technologies when you run a factory with high quality and higher efficiency, you can deliver to the global demands, however, you need to go faster on digitization. We believe that this is the right time for MSMEs to step up and embrace digital technologies to help them and our nation to become a global manufacturing hub.