New Delhi, Apr 13 (KNN) As a part of Industry 4.0 activities, a Demonstration project is to be undertaken on Industry 4.0 in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) across the country by National Productivity Council (NPC) in collaboration with Asian Productivity Organization (APO).

NPC under the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) established a “Centre of Excellence” on Industry 4.0 (CoE for I4.0) in collaboration with APO, Japan with an aim to function as knowledge centre for developing an ecosystem of digital platform with special focus on MSMEs and start-ups.

The Centre takes up task of demonstrating digital technological interventions, capacity building, dissemination of best practices and facilitating research & innovation.

One of the focus areas of this initiative is to create awareness and co-create an enabling ecosystem, accelerate innovation through adoption of entire spectrum of activities/technologies and delineating role and responsibilities of stakeholders.

The project involves a tripartite agreement among the group of organizations, NPC and APO. APO will be responsible for assignment of Technical Expert (who would visit India 4-5 times) to assist Demo Units in implementation of project.

These projects would look into the potential areas of improvement in digital transformation to improve the work flow and overall productivity.

Under the project, a group of 2-3 SMEs located in the vicinity will be formed from Automotive, Textile/Garments, Food Processing Sector etc.

NPC will guide and assist the demo units in planning, coordinating, executing, monitoring and documenting project activities in consultation with expert from APO.

The demo company should assign a team of dedicated, technically qualified professionals to work on the project in consultation with NPC/APO. It should provide all necessary input and information required for the project, extend all local support to expert/NPC/APO, implement the suggestions based on feasibility and document the results and outcomes.

The total implementation period for the Demonstration Project is around 10-12 months.

The expected outcome of the project includes overall productivity and efficiency improvement of the participating units; opportunity for the units to transition to “Digitally Enabled Manufacturing”; units will have potential to work as a display centre which will help Industry/SMEs & even large organizations to adopt I 4.0 technologies.

The results will be visible in terms of productivity gains, efficiency improvements etc. will act as a use case for other Industry/SMEs and international organizations so that they also implement Industry 4.0 solutions in their respective organizations.

The first successful APO demonstration project on Smart Manufacturing was carried out at an automotive MSME unit near Chennai.

Out of the above said five demonstration projects, NPC Chennai will implement 2-3 demo units preferably from Agriculture Machinery, Pharma and Food processing sectors. (KNN/YV)