In today’s competitive landscape, the manufacturing sector stands on the brink of a revolutionary transformation. The traditional factories of the past are giving way to smart, adaptive, and interconnected systems—ushered in by Industry 4.0. Often called the Fourth Industrial Revolution, Industry 4.0 blends advanced technologies like the Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Big...
In the race toward urban digitization, we often celebrate technological marvels while overlooking their ultimate purpose: enhancing human lives. Smart cities aren’t just networks of sensors and algorithms—they’re living ecosystems where technology serves people, not the other way around. Beyond the Buzzwords – Technology with Purpose The smartest cities aren’t necessarily those deploying cutting-edge...
Standing at a busy intersection in Barcelona last year, I watched as traffic signals adjusted in real-time to an unexpected surge of pedestrians leaving a local festival. No human operator intervened—the intersection’s embedded edge computing system had detected the anomaly, analyzed pedestrian flow patterns, and recalibrated signal timing to prevent congestion. What fascinated me wasn’t...
Walking through a modern city center today feels different than it did even a decade ago. Buildings are no longer passive structures of concrete, steel, and glass—they’re becoming active participants in urban life, communicating with occupants, optimizing their own performance, and interacting with the broader urban ecosystem. As someone who’s witnessed this evolution firsthand, I...
Three months ago, I stood in a steel mill watching a maintenance team disassemble a massive rolling machine that had failed without warning. Production had stopped completely. Workers stood idle. The plant manager estimated the cost at ₹15 lakh per hour of downtime—and they were looking at a 36-hour repair. “This is exactly why we...
Last semester, our campus experienced three false fire alarms in a single week. As the university’s technology director, I’d been pushing for an IoT sensor upgrade for months. The day after our board finally approved the budget, I walked through our engineering building with the installation team, pointing out where our new multi-spectrum sensors would...
Last month, I walked through a manufacturing plant in Pune that looked nothing like the noisy, chaotic factories I remembered from my engineering college days. This one was almost eerily quiet, with screens displaying colorful dashboards at every workstation. When a particular machine began operating slightly differently than usual, it wasn’t a human who noticed—it...
I was standing on the factory floor of a major automotive plant outside Chennai last month when something remarkable happened. A robotic arm suddenly adjusted its movement pattern—without any human intervention. The plant manager noticed my surprise and explained, “That’s edge computing in action. The system detected a potential alignment issue and corrected itself in...