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The Innovation Day conference held in Ahmedabad was insightful with dedicated focus on smart manufacturing.<p></p><p> India is witnessing a tremendous evolution in manufacturing sectors with reception of Industry 4.0 over the last few years. Nevertheless, the average level of digitalisation continues to lag behind global players across various sectors. India needs to significantly increase investments in digital technologies in order to sustain manufacturing competitiveness. To facilitate this shift towards industrial automation and digitisation, B&amp;R India held an Innovation Day event on July 12, 2019 in Ahmedabad, one of India's premier manufacturing hubs. This one-day conference was dedicated to the topic of smart manufacturing - with special emphasis on the acute needs of fully automated and connected assets and factories.</p><p> <span style="font-weight: bold;">Digitalisation - Adding value for customers</span><br />The event commenced with some inspiring words from Hans Wimmer, CEO, B&amp;R. He highlighted various accomplishments of the company in 2018 and explained how B&amp;R innovations help customers around the world enhance productivity, improve quality, avoid unplanned downtime and get ready for Industry 4.0. He was followed by Jhankar Dutta, Managing Director, B&amp;R India, who illustrated the many benefits of digitalisation for manufacturers. In a talk titled &quot;Innovation for High Performance&quot;, Shirish Divgi, Managing Director, Plastics Machinery Asia, Milacron, explained how corporate innovation leaders can build a high-performing innovation team. Session topics covered the need for digitisation, various automation trends, smart technologies and user experiences.</p><p> <span style="font-weight: bold;">The path to digital transformation </span><br />A well received panel discussion featured experts from numerous industries speaking on the topic of &quot;Building smart machines and factories: Concept to implementation&quot;. The panel comprised Premal Patwa, Technical Director, Prasad &amp; Prashant Group; Satish Godse, Director, NU VU Conair; Jignesh Pandya, Director, Gayatri Controls; Rahul Wathodkar, Senior Manager Technical Service, Desma India; Subrata Karmakar, President, Robotics Business, ABB India; and David Hemetsberger, Strategy Manager - India, B&amp;R Austria. The main objective of the panel discussion was to explore various aspects involved in successful digital transformation and ways to ensure long-term RoI. The panelists shared with the audience the current status of Indian machine manufacturing, short-term and long-term challenges and benefits of digitalisation and highlighted the importance of digitalisation.</p><p><span style="font-weight: bold;">Value creation through digitisation </span><br />Vinay Bansod, CTO, Windsor Machines, spoke on the topic, 'Value creation for customers through digitisation and IoT'. He noted the growing importance of flexibility, quality and efficiency for delivering value to customers. Anup Mishra, Director, Kalpvrux Converting Solutions, brought to attention various aspects of &quot;Creative converting solutions' along with a few success stories from his company's journey with B&amp;R solutions. B&amp;R's industry experts presented innovations such as integrated machine vision, human-track collaboration, hypervisor, digital twin and Industrial IoT with ABB Ability, which helps in creating a successful digital enterprise. </p><p>With close to 150 participants, Innovation Day - Ahmedabad proved to be an event full of insight for India's SMEs and MSMEs, which highlighted benefits of pursuing a digital transformation of plants, machinery and factories.</p>