Application of Internet of Things (IoT) for Smart Process Manufacturing in Indian Packaging Industry

Smart Manufacturing is the need of the hour in India with growing concerns of environmental safety, energy conservation and need for agile and efficient practices to help Indian firms remain competitive against the low cost mass manufacturing and imports. The twelfth five year plan in India (2012–17) (Ministry of Commerce, 2012) has identified low technology intensity, inadequate costs and high transaction costs as major constraints. Smart Manufacturing can help companies gather and consolidate data on near real time basis at each step of their operations to get meaningful insights using existing instrumentation e.g. sensors in valves, motors, pressure and energy meters by connecting them to a digital network where data generated by them is constantly stored for proactive decision making. This paper critically examines the role of Internet of Things in taking flexible packaging manufacturing to the next level in India with relevant citations from a Indian company and alleviating manufacturing pitfalls due to infrastructural issues be it energy, transportation or machine efficiency.