Firms need to place design at core of manufacturing strategy: Pradeep Nair

Interview with managing director, India & Saarc, Autodesk

Manufacturing economy needs to move towards a more fluid, flexible and closed-loop process to make product design infinitely more dynamic and innovative, Pradeep Nair tells Sangeeta Tanwar.

According to you, a majority of Indian organisations continue to struggle with the traditional mindset that design is an option and not an imperative. What is the way forward to change this status quo?

Technology adoption will play a huge role in helping India achieve its goal of becoming a global manufacturing hub. The environment in which this is happening is characterised by a global market that is changing at an unprecedented pace, driven by an ever-evolving, savvier consumer class that prizes customisation and individual utility over brand. With growing pressure from increasingly demanding customers and an extremely competitive global market, manufacturers are now focused on increasing innovation capacity, improving product performance, minimising defects and remaining profitable while increasing speed to market of new products and maintaining a high customer satisfaction rate.

This requires a mindset shift, because if Indian manufacturers are to become competitive globally they have to design and make products that suit this “new normal”. Thankfully, the technologies for enabling this are available. Autodesk, for example, helps its customers in manufacturing through a next generation technology platform called the Product Innovation Platform, or PIP, which centralises all the applications, knowledge, data and tools used in manufacturing products into a single system within an organisation, unifying the processes used to design, develop, manufacture and support products. This platform can improve product launch success rates, increase speed to market and service response rates and enhance customer satisfaction rates.

In what ways can manufacturers move towards a holistic ecosystem that involves design at every step of product development — from conceptualisation to production and sales?

The manufacturing economy is witnessing an unprecedented convergence between how things are designed, made and used across the manufacturing sector. We need to move from the traditional approach of linear manufacturing process (concept, design, produce, sell, operate and retire) towards a more fluid, flexible and closed-loop process to make product design infinitely more dynamic and therefore innovative. Leading manufacturing companies, including many of our customers, are transforming their innovation ecosystem by embracing future-ready technology platforms.

The company motto is to help businesses rethink how they do manufacturing. What are the key areas of investment for businesses that can help achieve this goal?

The competitive landscape in the manufacturing sector is changing quickly and will soon be unrecognisable. Huge companies with access to nearly limitless resources no longer have an insurmountable advantage. The playing field is being levelled; it’s all about who innovates first. Hence, a strong innovation culture, supported by relevant technology and upgraded skills, should be the way forward for businesses in the manufacturing sector.

The opportunity for Indian manufacturing is tremendous! Indian manufacturing companies need to place “design” at the core of their manufacturing strategy and be inspired to innovate through technologies such as generative design, which can flip the entire design process on its head by combining the power of artificial intelligence with design. Worldwide, we are already seeing novel applications of generative design from the likes of Hackrod, Airbus and Under Armour. For example, the Hackrod team has used generative design (Project Dreamcatcher), virtual reality, 3D printing and a cloud-based supply chain to create the world’s first AI-designed car chassis.

The adoption of such technologies is dependent on the availability of a skilled workforce to implement it. Upskilling and reskilling of the Indian workforce, which includes students as well as existing professionals, has become a business imperative now. Industry has to drive this change.

Technologies like 3D printing continue to be expensive and too tricky for the average consumer. What are the key technology interventions that can help make new manufacturing technologies more affordable?

In the context of advanced design technologies that are used in manufacturing, these have actually become more affordable owing to the growing adoption of the cloud-subscription model. In this new era of agile development, where boundaries between designing, making and using are disappearing, true process integration and competitive advantage can only come from a software environment built on the virtually infinite computing power of a cloud-based ecosystem. Complex design technologies like 3D printing need high computational power, a challenge which has been successfully addressed by cloud. The total cost of ownership of software has significantly gone down across the industry as technology providers are adopting a more customer-centric approach. We look at making our technologies available, accessible and affordable to our customers through our subscription offerings that offer customers the flexibility to use the tools as per their specific project requirements. This aids adoption in markets beyond the large firms, and helps to truly democratise technology.