Sameer Gandhi, Managing Director, Omron Automation, India

Providing complete automation solutions for industrial applications

Headquartered in Kyoto, Japan, the Industrial Automation business unit of OMRON is a global leader in providing complete automation solutions for industrial applications. It brings innovation to manufacturing sites through automation based on the concept of “i-Automation!” that comprises 3 “i (s)” – “integrated”, “intelligent” and “interactive” driving one of the world’s most sophisticated and wide product range encompassing panel components, smart sensors, Vision technologies, PLCs, Servos, Drives, Robots & Cobots and Machine safety solutions (ILOR+S) technology.

Focusing on solution business

OMRON Automation – India, now more than two decades old in the country, caters to varied industrial applications encompassing the wide requirements of packaging, automotive, material handling, food & beverages, digital and panel building applications. The company is focusing on the solution business, including Robotics and IIoT, providing “One Stop” solutions to improve the overall efficiency of diverse production sites. Focusing on the themes of quality, safety and the environment, it supports manufacturing innovation with its unique sensing & controlling technologies and caters to customers across the country via its strong network of offices, application, service and sales engineers supported by an automation technology center (for demos and PoCs), PoC lab, training centers as well as channel partners to address the ever-challenging requirements.

“Being one of the hotspots in terms of economic growth in Asia Pacific, India holds a significant place in the strategy of OMRON. India is expected to grow at a GDP of 6-7%. I feel, India being a largely domestic demand-driven economy, although our supply chains are not completely decoupled and disconnected from the rest of the world, we are still not hugely dependent on exports. We are less likely to be impacted by a global recession. The government initiatives like Make in India have been supportive. Driven through various PIL schemes, the capacity utilization for many of the manufacturers is now at a fairly high level, ideal for the initiation of the CAPEX building cycle. It is expected to pick up further in the coming years,” says Sameer Gandhi.

“The “China + 1” manufacturing strategy pursued by global manufacturers is also giving some good results. Many companies, especially in the digital sphere have announced and implemented plans of moving at least part of their production to India and this trend is likely to continue in 2023. All these indicators combined are catalyzing the manufacturing growth to go higher than the GDP level. This means a considerable rise in the manufacturing growth percentage in the total GDP than the GDP growth itself, lending the whole manufacturing sector a very positive and vibrant growth outlook,” remarks Gandhi.

“As manufacturers set up new facilities in India, the focus is on creating more harmony between people and machines on the shop floor in order to achieve better results and also to manage the uncertainty around the availability of skilled manpower. Owing to this, the automation industry has been witnessing a rise in the adoption of solutions by manufacturers. The utilization and dependence on automation solutions are expected to rise further beyond 2023. As a result, the automation growth should be faster than the manufacturing growth itself,” opines Gandhi.

Yet another important role played by automation in this whole manufacturing story is that many companies that have experience manufacturing in China, are setting up bases in India. Also there are Indian players who are setting up domestic manufacturing bases to compete with these global players. This has resulted in the emergence of Quality and Productivity as the top two and most essential considerations for manufacturers. It’s not possible to improve productivity and achieve global standards of quality without automation.

Striving towards achieving Sustainable Development Goals

Additionally, automation also enables in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of an organization. With organizations becoming more conscious and committed towards SDGs, the automation sector has a bright future ahead in 2023 and beyond. For example, varied automation-led solutions have immense potential to reduce the carbon footprints of operations to make them more energy efficient; to reduce wastage; to optimize the use of resources, thus impacting the sustainable development and SDG-related targets of an organization directly and indirectly.

To cater to this need and the growth opportunity, OMRON with its wide portfolio of automation solutions based on its “i-automation” concept is committed to helping the manufacturing industry meet this challenge. The concept stands for “innovative-automation” which is OMRON’s global manufacturing innovation direction based on three “i’s”- “integrated”, “intelligent” and “interactive” embodying three goals: “Digital engineering transformation”, “Automation beyond human abilities,” and “Advanced collaboration between people and machines” respectively.

Empowered by this, OMRON strives to enable the makers with the right and customized automation solutions to increase productivity & quality, achieve more energy efficiency and also up-skill the workforce with its training & education services so that they are able to make the most of the new automation technologies. While its condition monitoring solutions and robotics portfolio come in handy for achieving energy efficiency and productivity respectively, its i-BELT manufacturing site data utilization service streamlines the integrated management of diverse data, to bring about further improvement in productivity and quality at manufacturing floors. This also impacts the attainment of carbon neutrality – one of the prime imperatives for manufacturing businesses.

This year, so far, OMRON has already launched many new products across multiple categories – Sensing Solutions, the NX5 Controller and the TM20 Collaborative Robot – with improved efficiency and capacities that can seamlessly integrate with OMRON’s other products to deliver intelligent solutions that can be safely used in collaboration with the human workforce. The company also offers industry-tailored solutions such as OMRON Traceability Solutions for the p0harma industry where its multiple vision offerings seamlessly integrate to address the traceability requirement, easing regulatory compliance hassles, ensuring authenticity, and optimizing inventory management.

OMRON aims to continue its endeavor to empower manufacturers to create sustainable manufacturing sites which are carbon-neutral, indicating our vision of enriching the future for people, industries and the globe through innovative automation.