Digitisation of aerospace industry needed to scale up, position India as global mfg hub: TAS chief

New Delhi, Sep 18 (PTI) Digitisation is extremely important for Indian aerospace industry to be able to scale up and position itself as a global manufacturing hub, Tata Advanced Systems (TAS) Chairman Banmali Agarwala said on Thursday.

Participating in a panel discussion on exploring strategies, opportunities, and challenges in positioning India as a global hub for aerospace and defence manufacturing in a symposium organised by the Indian Foundation for Quality Management (IFQM), he also stressed the need for Indian firms to be able to absorb technology and build further rather than constantly being dependent on technology coming from the outside.

"Digitisation is extremely important. It is amazing how this industry, particularly the aerospace industry, is not digitised. You do not have drawings which are digitised. One is still dealing with pretty old fashioned drawings, because in many cases, the basic platform itself, which undergoes changes, is rather old, and therefore there are just changes that are made. So it's not digitised," he said.

He further said, "So we need to have an approach of digitisation so that we can scale up." Stressing on the need for scaling up, Agarwala said, "It would not be enough just to make a few prototypes. But if we've got to figure out, how do we make things at scale, it's not enough just to have one Tejas...we need to have at a scale." Digitisation will also help the supply chain for the process of doing "things at scale", he noted.

Agarwala also pointed out the need for Indian firms in the sector to be able to absorb global technology and build on it further.

"We do receive or get technology, because this is a global effort. We do bring in technology, but our ability to absorb technology and then build further, rather than constantly being dependent on technology coming from the outside is also very crucial...I'm really not sure whether we've done a good job of absorbing the technology that has so far come to us or that we might have developed," he noted. PTI RKL SHW