Watch: Puneesh Lamba on rebooting the CK Birla Group with IIoT, RPA and predictive analytics

CK Birla Group owned building materials company HIL (Hyderabad Industries Limited) recently embraced industry 4.0 with the establishment of a connected shop floor at its Chennai factory. 

Industry 4.0 or the fourth industrial revolution refers to the increasing automation and digitalisation of manufacturing industries. Factories of the future are expected to have a combination of IIoT (industrial internet of things), cyber physical systems and intelligent machines that will work with minimal human intervention.

HIL’s connected shop floor in Chennai is part of an overall move within the diversified CK Birla Group towards the digital transformation of its various businesses.  

Spearheading these digital transformation initiatives is Puneesh Lamba, senior vice president and group CIO at CK Birla Group. Lamba, who joined the group in 2015, is an industry veteran who earlier vice president and CIO at Ballarpur Industries and also worked at companies such as Punj Lloyd, Genpact and Tata Consultancy Services.

In an interview with TechCircle, Lamba spoke about rolling out industry 4.0 solutions in several more factories, the challenges of upskilling and reskilling the current workforce and cyber security.

“The talent available on the dark side of the web is actually bigger and better than the right side of the web. There are a lot of programmes that we have started internally, to ensure that not only are they protected, but even if there is an attack we have not only the ability but speed to respond to those attacks,” he said.