L&T Technology Services - September 2020

DIGITAL REPORT 2020

Mitigating COVID-19 disruption in manufacturing

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MITIGATING COVID-19 DISRUPTION IN MANUFACTURING

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Prabhakar Shetty, Global Head of Manufacturing Services at L&T Technology Services, discusses his organization’s digital transformation in manufacturing against the backdrop of COVID-19 L&T Technology Services (LTTS) is a global leader in Engineering and R&D services. With 525 patents filed for 53 of the Global Top 100 ER&D spenders, LTTS revolves around engineering.

Prabhakar Shetty is the Global Head of Manufacturing Services at LTTS. Having joined 04

the organisation in 2017, Prabhakar oversees the digital led initiatives across verticals including Industry 4.0, smart cities and digital manufacturing, managing PLM, manufacturing operations, asset management, content management and engineering managed services. With more than 30 years of international experience across industry verticals, Shetty has been one of the key industry leaders who has played an active role in the rise of digitalisation in manufacturing.

“If you look two decades back, most of the industries were looking at process improvements with the whole idea centered around globalisation and ensuring that processes were as efficient and as lean as possible,” says Shetty. “The ensuing ERP phase saw the collaboration of customer

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“I believe a massive technological shift is underway”

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the volume of business grew and it became much more global, it gave birth to niche interventions around functions like sourcing, supply chain,

— Prabhakar Shetty, Global Head of Manufacturing Services, LTTS

CRM, planning etc. Companies like

management, human resource,

highly complex and intelligent products

business intelligence, financial man-

and systems that can talk to each other

agement, inventory and supply chain

while generating huge amounts of data.

capabilities into one system. This

I believe a massive technological shift

helped to bring together customer

is underway. But the question revolves

management, human resources,

around how to harness the data com-

business intelligence, financial man-

ing out of the shop floor, products and

agement, inventory, and supply chain

various collaborative functions.”

capabilities into one system. When

i2 evolved solutions which clearly defined outcomes of core processes.

“In the current environment, we have

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused disruption across industries worldwide.

Shetty believes it has highlighted the importance of planning and mitigating against situations that are deemed improbable in the past.

LTTS: Plant Engineering Services CLICK TO WATCH

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2:44

09 “Considerations for business

if any of these nodes to go down. You

continuity planning are usually for

also need to have a crisis management

predictable and foreseeable threats

team to act on these and identify the

to normal working” explains Shetty.

risk associated.”

“This could be transportation, sup-

Shetty affirms that it is important

plier disruptions or power issues and

to be agile and proactive in order

these events are easier to anticipate.

to succeed in an environment that

However, COVID-19 has shown how

is continuously changing as a result

important planning is.”

of the pandemic. “Nobody could have

“It’s important to break down your

foreseen this and it meant that any

business into different nodes, for each

reactions were knee-jerk and clearly

of those nodes assess the failure of

caused major disruption across the

the impact from two standpoints:

entire supply chain,” explains Shetty.

the financial and operational. Based

“It’s important to ask yourself: as a

on that you plan for remedial actions

services company how can you help www.l tt s . com

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“ It’s important to ask yourself: how can you help customers at a time like this? There’s no precedent or framework for this type of situation” — Prabhakar Shetty, Global Head of Manufacturing Services, LTTS

across functions like product design,

manufacturing, sales, and service. For example it’s key to have design flexibility because your original product might

customers at a time like this? There’s

not sell and you may have to change

no precedent or framework for this

components or even the whole prod-

type of situation.”

uct. During the pandemic, you’ve seen

“We launched a program called

automotive companies that wouldn’t

F.R.U.G.AL based on flexible, remote

usually offer medical supplies delve

and agile methodologies. Rapid

into that market to produce ventilators,

transformations were expected

for example.

“It’s also important to consider manu-

your workforce to work with alternates.

facturing operation flexibility and how

These are all important considerations.”

you can quickly transition from one prod-

Cloud is also a key area and Shetty

uct to another. How can you repurpose

explains how the coronavirus is forcing

your manufacturing lines? If you have a

manufacturers to rethink their overall

demand spike, how do you look at line

cloud strategy.

expansion? If certain components are

“There are a few elements you need

not available how do you quickly train

to be aware of with cloud because how

E X E C U T I V E P R O FILE :

Prabhakar Shetty 11

Title: Global Head – Digital Manufacuting Services Industry: Information Technology & Services Prabhakar is a seasoned executive with extensive experience in building and nurturing successful consulting and technology businesses. He has over 30 years of international work experience within the manufacturing, retail and CPG space with repeated success guiding multimillion-dollar portfolios with P&L responsibility.

In his current role as Global Head Digital Manufacturing Services at Larsen & Toubro Technology Services (LTTS), Prabhakar leads multiple units like PLM, Manufacturing Automation, Asset Management, Engineering Content Management and Managed Services. This group leads all the digital led initiatives across verticals including Ind 4.0, Smart Cities etc. Prabhakar has initiated multiple solution streams to leverage LTTS pedigree in core engineering and align it with new age applications and technologies. www.l tt s . com

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“ Partners should be aligned to the end goal of the value chain to serve customers to meet their business objectives” — Prabhakar Shetty, Global Head of Manufacturing Services, LTTS

you use and consume technology will

You have the foundation processes layer

significantly change. Implementation

that generates data, the technology layer

models will be different because we can’t

where all enterprise applications reside,

afford five-month consulting studies &

the experience layer where the user will

then do a long drawn implementation

be interacting with the system, and then

or rollouts – we need something that’s

cognition. The outcome of analytics is

ready now.

critical. But a wider view across these

“This means that most of the applica-

5 elements is critical.”

tions on the cloud need to be pre-built.

With the importance of developing

We feel that the cloud system architec-

key, strategic partnerships in mind,

ture will be divided into four or five layers.

Shetty highlights that it’s impossible

partners. Today’s customers want one entity who can look after the entire value chain. It can be multiple players who can add to the big picture. But all these partners should be aligned to the end goal of the value chain to serve customers to meet their business objectives.”

Looking to the future, Shetty believes that digitalisation will continue to transform the manufacturing industry and play an influential role. “In the last five years, technology has enabled transformation around us. It has become cheaper and customers have become more agile to adopt & leverage the latest tech. Products have become complex because you have different elements in today’s intelligent products. With a complex ecosystem, it’s important you to work in silos and meet changing

have versatile skillsets across the

market demands.

board. LTTS has brought together lots

“When you look at the value chain

of partners to create an ecosystem of

today, what is impacting it the most? It’s

excellence which can help build value-

a rapidly changing business model and

added solutions to end customers to

there are lots of new technologies being

transform their business model.”

introduced and you can’t do everything yourself,” says Shetty.

“You need to have various ecosystem partners and traditionally people thought that partners meant only technology www.l tt s . com

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