Latest news with #ETManufacturing
Time of India
6 days ago
- Business
- Time of India
Thermax partners Norway's HydrogenPro to localise green hydrogen electrolyser technology in India
ET Supply Chain & Logistics Conclave 2026 The logistics sector, a linchpin in trade and commerce, plays a pivotal role in supporting India's import and export business and contributes significantly to its overall economic growth. ET Global Manufacturing Conclave 2025 Global Manufacturing Conclave 2025, will bring together industry leaders, technology experts, and policymakers to explore the future of manufacturing in an increasingly dynamic and digital world. As manufacturers navigate challenges like supply chain Follow Us Follow ETManufacturing on LinkedIn for event updates and latest news.
Time of India
17-07-2025
- Business
- Time of India
KhushTech Korea plans $100 million investment in Andhra for D2M phone factory: CEO Eric Shin, ETManufacturing
ET Aerospace & Defence Manufacturing Summit 2025 India's aerospace and defence sector is experiencing rapid expansion, driving forward the manufacturing industry by producing aircraft, ships, spacecraft, and weapon systems, among other equipment that meet international quality standards. This growt ET Supply Chain & Logistics Conclave 2025 The logistics sector, a linchpin in trade and commerce, plays a pivotal role in supporting India's import and export business and contributes significantly to its overall economic growth. ET Global Manufacturing Conclave 2025 Global Manufacturing Conclave 2025, will bring together industry leaders, technology experts, and policymakers to explore the future of manufacturing in an increasingly dynamic and digital world. As manufacturers navigate challenges like supply chain Follow Us Follow ETManufacturing on LinkedIn for event updates and latest news.
Time of India
05-07-2025
- Automotive
- Time of India
BMW's Thomas Dose urges purpose driven smart manufacturing in India
India's rise as a manufacturing hub is no longer a distant ambition. It is a present-day opportunity. But to realise its full potential, the country's industrial sector must rewire the way it approaches production. Speaking at a recent industry summit, Thomas Dose , MD, BMW Group Plant Chennai , and a long-time advocate of manufacturing transformation, argued that flexibility will define the winners of the next industrial age. He was speaking at ET Manufacturing's Smart Factory Summit organised in Chennai. 'The future is not about being smart for the sake of it. It's about staying relevant in a volatile world,' said Thomas, addressing a hall full of manufacturing professionals and technologists. He added, 'We've moved from machines driving factories to factories needing to think like products, lean, purposeful, and focused on the customer,' reflecting on his own journey from working at ZF in Germany to embracing the Toyota Production System in Japan. He noted how early manufacturing was organised around technology silos such as turning, milling and heat treatment, efficient in isolation, but disconnected from the final product. Throughput times stretched into weeks. The shift to lean manufacturing in the 1990s brought product-centric cells that drastically improved output and quality by aligning every activity with cost, quality, and delivery. This evolution continued through mass production and global outsourcing, but introduced new vulnerabilities. Complex global supply chains, long lead times, and distance from end-users created fragility, challenges that became painfully visible in recent years. Rigid systems are obsolete in a volatile world 'The way we've made money in the past won't work in the future. The model must change,' Thomas declared, urging the audience to reconsider long-held assumptions around asset utilisation and cost predictability. He recounted a visit to a BMW supplier in India, where the entire plant was configured to serve one client. 'The machinery was perfect but it was locked into one product line. That kind of rigidity isn't sustainable anymore,' he explained. In a market defined by shorter product lifecycles, unstable volumes, and unpredictable foreign exchange rates, manufacturers must move toward multi-use, easily reconfigurable assets. This shift, he argued, calls for a new class of factory, autonomous, workforce-independent, and capable of running 24/7 with minimal intervention. Order management, logistics, production planning, and quality inspection must all function within a real-time, AI-enabled infrastructure. Smart must serve a purpose 'Smart must have purpose. Possible doesn't always mean practical or wise,' Thomas cautioned, as he challenged manufacturers to avoid technology for technology's sake. Using the evolution of mobile phones as an analogy, he described how tools originally designed for communication morphed into powerful data harvesting machines. While the global mobile phone market is valued at over $500 billion, the market for trading the data extracted from users exceeds $900 billion. 'We must ask ourselves, are we building smart factories, or just data factories?' he said. The takeaway was clear: smart manufacturing should not be reduced to buzzwords or blanket digitisation. Instead, it should be a tool for enabling business resilience, responsiveness, and sustainability. Process first, then digital 'If you digitise a caterpillar, it doesn't become a butterfly, it just crawls faster,' Thomas said, earning knowing smiles from the audience. He urged manufacturers to look inwards before going digital. Recounting his team's early steps in digital transformation, he said their first action was to shut down all computers. Without dashboards and KPIs to defend, morning meetings turned into proactive conversations about preventing future problems, rather than post-mortems of past ones. This reset, he explained, created space for genuine collaboration and process ownership. 'Technology can accelerate your mindset, but only if the mindset is right to begin with,' he said. Thomas called this philosophy the 'Ilia principle,' based on Indian wisdom and lean thinking. His upcoming book, set in Chennai and centred on a young woman who transforms a factory using lessons from her grandmother, aims to share this approach more broadly. India's moment on the global stage 'India is the next big thing. But we must be ready. Not just with machines and manpower, but with mindset and purpose,' said Thomas, concluding his address. He noted the increasing interest from global manufacturers in India as a sourcing base and industrial partner. But he also cautioned that India's long-term competitiveness would depend on quality consistency, agile processes, and preparedness for uncertainty. The message to Indian industry was clear: now is the time to invest in flexibility, rethink digital priorities, and align every action with a larger purpose. 'Make it simple. Make it smart. Make it purposeful,' he said. 'That's how India will lead, not follow in the future of manufacturing.'
Time of India
04-07-2025
- Automotive
- Time of India
India's auto inc could be follower or a fierce leader: Andy Palmer
When Dr Andy Palmer , former Aston Martin CEO and the man credited with launching the world's first mass-market EV, the Nissan Leaf , speaks about the future of automotive, he doesn't mince words. During his recent visit to India, Palmer described the country as being at a historic crossroads, one where it must decide whether to continue as a technology follower or emerge as an innovator in its own right. 'You either lead or follow. The road to following will just make you obey China. But India uniquely has the opportunity to create something that's competitive,' he said in an exclusive conversation with ETManufacturing. A market with momentum, but gaps to close India's automotive sector is now the third largest in the world, having surpassed Japan in 2023. The country produced nearly 5 million passenger vehicles and over 20 million two-wheelers in FY 2023. Sales of passenger vehicles crossed the 3 million mark last year, and despite global supply chain constraints, the market continues to post consistent year-on-year growth of 5–7 percent. On the electric vehicle front, India registered over one million EV sales in 2023, a 25 percent jump over the previous year, with strong traction in the two-wheeler and three-wheeler segments. However, Palmer noted that while the numbers are promising, India's pace still lags far behind China, where EV sales have crossed 4 million units annually and where the government's industrial push toward clean mobility began as early as 1992. Batteries and the question of technological independence For Palmer, the real battleground in the EV transition is not vehicle assembly, it's batteries. China today controls nearly 70 to 80 percent of global lithium-ion battery production capacity. It also dominates the entire battery value chain, from raw material mining to refining and cell production. India, by contrast, has just two to three gigawatt-hours of installed cell manufacturing capacity. Despite the central government's Production Linked Incentive (PLI) schemes aiming to create 50 GWh of battery output by 2030, progress has been slow and uneven. 'If India chooses to keep importing battery cells, it will be tied to the pricing and politics of others,' Palmer warned. 'But if it invests now in next-generation chemistrieslike sodium-ion, NMC, solid-state, it could set the global benchmark. The question is whether you want to be a customer or a competitor.' Palmer challenged India to rethink its dependence on imported battery technologies and instead lead the development of emerging alternatives. Sodium-ion batteries, which do not rely on lithium, present a unique opportunity. India, he argued, could position itself as a global pioneer in sodium-based energy storage or focus on advanced chemistries such as nickel-manganese-cobalt (NMC) and solid-state technologies to improve energy density and safety. India as the next China+1 hub? In the context of the global realignment of supply chains, what the world now refers to as the 'China+1' strategy, Palmer believes India is in a prime position to benefit. Multinational companies are actively looking to de-risk their dependence on Chinese suppliers, and India has several structural advantages. A large domestic market, competitive labour costs, and a deepening vendor ecosystem provides fertile ground for new investments. The country has already attracted over $5 billion in foreign direct investment into auto components over the past two years, doubling the previous five-year average. However, Palmer cautioned that India must convert these macro advantages into focused capability building in areas like EV platforms, critical materials processing, and value-added localisation. 'India has the opportunity to either copy from the West and improve, or go its own way. But it must act with intent,' he said. Software as a strategic advantage Beyond hardware, Palmer believes one of India's most underappreciated strengths is its deep talent pool in software and digital technologies. As the automotive industry moves towards software-defined vehicles, where everything from engine calibration to infotainment is run by code, India can lead. 'Define the vehicle of the future in the same way China did ten years ago. That's where you find your niche,' he said. Its $150 billion IT export ecosystem, headquartered in cities like Bengaluru and Pune, gives it an edge in embedded software, AI integration, and over-the-air update capabilities. Palmer urged Indian OEMs and startups to pivot their software focus away from enterprise systems like ERP or SAP and toward vehicle intelligence and user interface design. Collaboration, not silos While India's potential is widely acknowledged, Palmer believes the country must now take the difficult but necessary step of building better institutional collaboration. 'The Chinese are really good at aligning government, industry, and academia. India needs to work harder at working together, but the rewards are worth it,' he said. Unlike China's one-party model, India's democratic setup requires consensus, agility, and long-term vision to execute bold moves. To that end, Palmer sees the need for a more integrated approach, one where national and state governments align on EV policy, academia accelerates battery R&D, and the private sector scales innovations into commercial deployment. Palmer's message to India's automotive sector is clear and uncompromising. The country can either play catch-up or become a serious challenger to China in the global EV race. It has the market scale, it has the talent, and it has the early signs of policy momentum. What it now needs is strategic commitment and a willingness to lead. He concluded, 'You're at a turning point. You can be a fast follower or a fierce leader. India has all the ingredients if it chooses to act with intent.'
Time of India
27-06-2025
- Automotive
- Time of India
Lessons from space can help Indian auto leap ahead, says Pawan Goenka
As India races towards an electric mobility future, industry veteran Dr Pawan Goenka , Chairman of IN-SPACe and former Managing Director of Mahindra & Mahindra , believes the road ahead must begin with a fundamental transformation of India's automotive supply chain — starting with localising high-quality component manufacturing. 'In EVs, low-hanging fruits are already picked. We need to reach higher now,' Goenka told ET Manufacturing at the sixth edition of the Auto Tech Summit. 'India simply cannot afford to lag in developing capabilities for all major EV components — battery packs, motors, controllers, chargers, power electronics — everything. Today, the challenge isn't talent or ambition. It's scale.' Despite the emergence of hundreds of Tier-1 and Tier-2 suppliers across the country, Indian manufacturers still depend heavily on imports for several critical components, especially motors and advanced battery systems in the four-wheeler segment. Goenka pointed out that although battery pack assembly is now being done locally by most OEMs, large-scale motor manufacturing for electric cars remains elusive. 'Three-wheeler and two-wheeler motors are made here, but four-wheeler motors are still being imported. That must change,' he said. The Indian auto component industry recorded its highest-ever revenue of ₹5.6 lakh crore in FY24, according to the Automotive Component Manufacturers Association (ACMA), representing a 14.6 per cent year-on-year growth. The country also exported components worth $20.3 billion during the same period, showing India's competitiveness in global supply chains. But growth, Goenka said, is being held back by fragmentation and lack of scale. 'Multiple suppliers catering to small volumes means no one achieves efficiency. What's needed now is collaboration among OEMs — not competition — in sourcing key EV components. That's how we built scale in ICE vehicles over 25 years. We need to do the same for EVs.' He also warned OEMs not to regress to a 1990s mindset — prioritising short-term margins over long-term capability building. 'This is the time to push the supplier ecosystem forward, not cut corners,' he said. Space-age lessons for automotive scale Goenka's transition from the automotive sector to leading India's space commercialisation push has only reinforced his perspective on building ecosystems. 'Every sector change is an opportunity to learn and contribute. When I moved from cars to space, the technology complexity was staggering. But what I brought from automotive — supplier development, manufacturing discipline, ecosystem thinking — proved very useful.' He noted that while technology is unlikely to flow from automotive into space due to complexity gaps, process innovations certainly can. 'Space manufacturing today operates in batch mode. Automotive has mastered continuous flow. That's a mindset we can apply in space to scale faster,' Goenka said. India's space sector is also witnessing a parallel shift. Since the opening of the space economy to private players in 2020, over 190 space-tech startups have emerged in India, with investments crossing ₹1,000 crore in the past 24 months, as per IN-SPACe estimates. The ambition now is to grow India's share in the global space economy from the current 2 per cent to 10 per cent in the next decade — a leap that would require ecosystem-level thinking similar to what the automotive industry experienced two decades ago. Conversely, the automotive sector can stand to gain a lot from aerospace — if cost barriers are cracked. Technologies like advanced sensors, gyroscopes, anti-vibration systems, and thermal insulation, which are critical in space missions, could be translated into automotive use cases — particularly safety — if frugally engineered. 'The real challenge is bringing those costs down by removing unnecessary features and localising production. Institutions like ARAI could play a key role in bridging that gap,' he noted. Road Safety: A Cultural Imperative When asked about safety — especially for India's vulnerable two-wheeler users — Goenka acknowledged that while vehicle safety has improved drastically, the deeper issue lies elsewhere. 'Ten years ago, Indian cars weren't safe. Today, thanks to Gadkari's push, our norms match global standards. But the bigger problem is behaviour — lack of discipline on roads, refusal to wear helmets, disregard for rules. That's where we are failing.' India accounted for nearly 1.68 lakh road accident deaths in 2022, with two-wheelers involved in over 44 per cent of fatal crashes, according to Ministry of Road Transport and Highways data. Despite improved crash-test regulations and the proliferation of safer cars, India still leads the world in road fatalities. Goenka was blunt in his criticism: 'Educated people not wearing helmets — what could be more foolish? You're risking your life for what? There's no excuse. It's not a technology issue; it's a societal one.' EV Adoption: From promise to pragmatism Goenka was candid about the electric vehicle (EV) adoption journey in India. 'Three-wheelers led the charge because it made direct economic sense — more earnings, lower running costs. Mahindra's Treo helped create that ecosystem. Two-wheelers followed due to aggressive startup activity and affordability. But four-wheelers and commercial vehicles? OEMs just didn't back them early enough.' He believes momentum is finally picking up, thanks to improving products and falling battery costs. The average price of lithium-ion cells dropped by nearly 14% in 2023 globally, according to BloombergNEF, making EVs more competitive with ICE vehicles. 'New launches like the Tata BE.9, Maruti's eVX, and upcoming Korean models are changing the landscape. Once these vehicles become mainstream, adoption will accelerate. I drive a BE.9 myself — it's a joy. Costs ₹2 per km to run, compared to ₹17 for petrol. I took it to Pune and back without charging — range anxiety is no longer a real issue.' India's overall EV penetration stood at around 6.4 per cent in FY24, led primarily by electric two-wheelers and three-wheelers, which together account for nearly 90% of total EV sales. The passenger car EV segment, while growing, still forms only about 2 per cent of the total car market. Goenka expects this to change steadily: 'Let's not expect miracles. I would cautiously say 10 per cent penetration for EV four-wheelers by 2030 is achievable — provided manufacturers continue to launch compelling products and maintain pricing discipline.' He also dismissed the often cited charging infrastructure concern. 'Range has gone up so much that charging at home is enough for most use cases. Public chargers are growing anyway. That challenge is mostly behind us.' From space-grade safety principles to coordinated localisation in EVs, Dr Goenka's central message is clear: India must stop thinking small. Whether it's components, scale, or vision, the next phase of Indian mobility will demand more collaboration, deeper innovation, and unwavering focus on long-term value.
