With widening scope and application of artificial intelligence across sectors, the ministry of commerce is trying to make the manufacturing sector AI-enabled, which will in turn give a major push to government's Make in India programme. The commerce ministry has constituted a task force on Artificial Intelligence (AI) for India’s economic transformation. Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said that with rapid development in the fields of information technology and hardware, the world is about to witness a fourth industrial revolution.
"Driven by the power of big data, high computing capacity, artificial intelligence and analytics, Industry 4.0 aims to digitise the manufacturing sector", said Sitharaman.
The panel will comprise of experts, academics, researchers and industry leaders and will explore possibilities to leverage AI for development across various fields. The task force will submit concrete and implementable recommendations for government, industry and research institutions.
Members on the panel include those from IIT Delhi, Madras and Kanpur, officials from ministry of IT and electronics, and executives from the industry.
The government is aiming to increase the share of manufacturing to 25 per cent of the GDP from the present 17 per cent, with a view of creating millions of jobs and pushing the country's economic growth. To achieve this target, the Indian industry has to adopt Industry 4.0, smart manufacturing, as it is important to boost manufacturing.
Industry 4.0 or the fourth industrial revolution integrates the digital and manufacturing world. Technologies moving from electrified to automated, to digitalised manufacturing, such as big data and analytics, autonomous robots, IoT, cyber security and augmented reality are transforming the manufacturing landscape.
For example, the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, along with Boeing, is building India's first smart factory in Bengaluru. Bosch will begin smart manufacturing in India by 2018. General Electric (GE) has invested in smart manufacturing ecosystem in India as well.