Zoom Meeting – Is This Crisis Or Opportunity For Manufacturing SMEs?

This zoom meeting is to discuss and address small business challenges of managing through current global economy crisis.

[Trupti] : Talking about the manufacturing industry already we are seeing the market was slow. And currently we get to hear that with the zero GDP and with more than four weeks of lock down there has come a big slowdown in the manufacturing industry. Question : So how can SMBs, especially in the manufacturing industry can turn around this situation?

[Amod] : I mean, the situation seems to be really grim as projected, but I think this could actually be a very good blessing in disguise for our industries. Because the first and foremost thing that is to be looked at is the China factor. Our biggest threat was China and China was absolutely dominating the manufacturing domain. But with this current situation, with corona virus coming out of China, there is a a lot of negative sentiment about China. And I guess the global business community has really understood and identified that focusing only in one market, or depending totally on one market for manufacturing is going to be a big risk, as we have all found out. Yeah. Hence the global community is definitely now going to look at other options to invest or set their basis. This exactly becomes the huge opportunity for India. If we really are able to create that kind of infrastructure, ease of doing business and enable our businesses to function smoothly with manutention and those things team, then this can really be the biggest push that our industry needed. And therefore, instead of looking at this as a painful situation, you should be looking forward to the possibilities that can arise out of this. Again if you are ready.

[Trupti] : Yes Question : How can manufacturing business transform themselves to digital to turn around this situation?

[Amod] : Now moving from these lock-downs then there will be partial lock downs and then there will be a release and this is going to take time, right? So then in such cases, what needs to be done, most businesses will actually look at the digital ways of transforming their businesses in any case, because there are going to be a lot of labor laws coming in. Then lot of position of labor is going to happen. Traveling of labor from one place to another. There will lot of regulations there. This would be a disruption for something there. So for businesses to function smoothly. If they are very labor dependent they are going to face further problems. Therefore with digitization what business can really achieve is a smooth functioning with all the regulations in place, smooth functioning of businesses can happen to digitization.

General trends for manufacturing industry moving ahead:
– IOT and AI – for manufacturing processes, production and performance
– Digital Automation
– for independence and effectiveness
– Digital modelling
– 3d, AR/VR presentations for marketing
– Digital marketing solutions
– O2O, Account Based Marketing, integrated CRMs
– Remote guided operations.

This is how business can really look at the transforming themselves digitally. It’s a investment upfront, but this investment will definitely pay in the long term. Especially with manufacturing industries in India, which are more labor intensive and with localization of most businesses happening now. That seems to be the way forward to go.