The IT capital is set to host India's first 'smart factory' where machines speak to each other. Armed with the Internet of Things and data exchange in manufacturing, the factory is the future. Experts are calling it Industry 4.0. Reports peg the smart factory market to touch $215 billion by 2025, and there is no major economy in the world that is not embracing it. India's first factory is making progress at the Centre for Product Design and Manufacturing (CPDM) of the Indian Institute of Science, with seed funding from Boeing.

"In a smart factory, all these five elements exist. What's more is the continuous activity of collecting data, analysing it and using it to attain the most optimal result from the factory."

Data is collected from a variety of sensors on a variety of activities: The posture of a welder, the kind of energy used, the damage caused to the machine and its replacement cycle. The factory is self-aware, in a sense.

"It knows when a worker needs rest, when a machine needs repair or replacement, the humidity, temperature, everything. The data collected is analyzed before course correction is initiated," Chakrabarti added.

The network-enabled framework employed for manufacturing provides huge scope for autonomy.

"The Internet of Things has enabled this. In another big leap, we've made headway in natural language processing."

"It's fantastic that the project is happening. The smart factory concept in India has been a little slow because we don't have labour shortage or expensive labour. Here, we do it to maintain competitive edge and provide customer satisfaction." according to Dr Rishi Bhatnagar, Chairman of the Institute of Engineering and Technology India IoT panel.

Smart factory - Salient features

- Data collection & collation from instrumented manufacturing facility: Collect real-time data and legacy data (something that already exists)

- Marry both kinds of data to plan, monitor, diagnose & improve manufacturing situations; all through intelligent systems

- Employ Natural Language processing to acquire knowledge that can solve issues

- Autonomous tool serving as an integrated software for all required data acquisition, processing, analytics et al, to implement complete network-enabled framework