iD4 Realms: Digitizing the World of Manufacturing

Unautomated manufacturing plants are seedbeds of chaos and inefficiency. Burdened with aging infrastructure, they are prone to losses. The idea of connected manufacturing or smart factory is becoming increasingly pervasive. Without responsive, agile, connected and real-time information backbone companies are finding it increasingly difficult to anticipate failures, enforce quality checks and cost-cutting measures, and take corrective actions. The aim is to reap benefits and improvements in efficiency and profitability, increased innovation, compliance and better management of safety, performance, and environmental impact.

Not a Utopia but Reality

Reports peg the smart factory industry to touch USD 215 billion by 2025 and there is no major economy in the world that is not embracing it. “With too many failure points and lack of digitization of their core competencies, modern day factories find it very difficult to organize their production,” says Vijay Apsangi, Founder and CEO of iD4 Realms. Based in Pune, India, the company started operations in 2008, with the focus to aid ailing healthcare enterprises and manufacturing units revive by leveraging digital automation. Today the firm’s flagship Smart Connected Factory Platform, iPROD, helps manufacturing enterprises to embrace digital transformation and seamlessly integrate their business operations, equipments, processes, workforce, and legacy systems. The aim of the platform is to connect business units with a digital backbone, let businesses reduce waste and organize production flows. Designed as per plug-and-play framework, iPROD solutions can be deployed in-premise, or hosted on a public or private cloud. Many manufacturing units continue to use Excel and spreadsheets, or rely on paperwork, that translates into inefficiency. The iPROD platform helps such companies automate processes, enabling them to take a quantum leap from manual reports on plant updates to dynamic reporting, real-time reporting dashboards and smart infographics.

As a unified integrated productivity framework, iPROD spreads across the entire manufacturing spectrum including supply-chain, assets, inventory and warehouse management. Some of the key iPROD based smart connected factory solutions offered by iD4 include Smart production and component traceability, Smart KPI, M2M communication, Device data acquisition, Smart Workforce efficiency management, Smart Light picking systems, Smart Real-time locating systems, SmartKitting management and warehouse integration, Smart maintenance, Smart Reporting, BI and Infographics. Another challenge that manufacturers struggle which stems from streamline processes across various business units and across business operations/department executing in silos. The platform brings about the integration of workflow processes across the length and breadth of manufacturing companies to ensure that all the units act in concert. “They can deliver smooth production sequences which improve resource utilization and throughput. They also reduce repair costs, ease production planning, reduce product complexity, cut downtimes, shorten cycles and optimize inventory,” explains Vijay. The solutions are designed to improve visibility into every manufacturing process that allows users to track the performance of a facility – be it rate of work or line efficiency or spot hidden losses. One of iD4’s success stories entails a client who was keen on digitizing production at its factory units. With the help of iD4’s smart connected factory solutions, the client undertook production traceability and KPI monitoring and was able to track, trace and take appropriate corrective measures. As a result, the operational costs of the plant came down by 25 to 30 percent, and equipment productivity went up by 20 percent. Vijay believes that their high degree of integrity and sensitivity to client needs has been instrumental in the success of the company and its products. Currently, the company has over a hundred clients from various sectors such as automotive, FMCGs, power and automation, heavy equipment makers and healthcare companies. Today iD4 serves businesses of all sizes from Tier-1 OEMs to small-to-medium manufacturing enterprises.

Keeping pace with the emerging technologies, iD4 is currently working on creating supply chain optimization solutions to improve visibility and gaining supply risk insights using AI and Machine learning. These include setting inventory safety levels, transportation network design, purchasing and supply management, and demand planning and forecasting. Vijay says “The awareness and ability to make fact-based decisions that artificial intelligence makes possible is going to be game-changer to optimize the entire supply chain spectrum”. iD4 also intends to make real-time locating systems services faster, simpler and cost-effective.