I have attended three fairs in the last month… Besides all of them showing a good visitor turnout and continuing with the discussions on offering sustainable products, what struck me was that all the machine manufacturers and suppliers presented their automated solutions. Probably, the enhanced business confidence followed by the improvement in order position has brightened the mood of the industry. Even the Government policies and schemes are working out to be a breather for large investors, making the cost of ownership lighter.
We can of course not neglect the impact of labour shortage, which is slowly but surely pushing manufacturers to opt for automation as an alternate… Another emphasis area for the technology providers was their claim to having machines with lowest running cost or operating cost. The operating cost is no doubt the critical factor in any buying decision and ideally it would include maintenance, support infrastructure and consumables, apart from energy and labour.
Among the operating cost, the investors are more concerned about cost of downtime (equivalent to loss of production), cost of repair (spare part and labour cost, which sometimes involves expert flying in from other countries), and cost of maintenance (Annual Maintenance Contracts (AMC) and machine engineers salary). For India, with poor spare part availability and lack of trained engineers, these factors are looming large during any investment decision…
We can of course not neglect the impact of labour shortage, which is slowly but surely pushing manufacturers to opt for automation as an alternate… Another emphasis area for the technology providers was their claim to having machines with lowest running cost or operating cost. The operating cost is no doubt the critical factor in any buying decision and ideally it would include maintenance, support infrastructure and consumables, apart from energy and labour.
Among the operating cost, the investors are more concerned about cost of downtime (equivalent to loss of production), cost of repair (spare part and labour cost, which sometimes involves expert flying in from other countries), and cost of maintenance (Annual Maintenance Contracts (AMC) and machine engineers salary). For India, with poor spare part availability and lack of trained engineers, these factors are looming large during any investment decision…
