Chief Guest for the meet was Rajesh Agrawal, Member Rolling Stock Railway Board. In his address highlighted the important aspects of Smart and Sustainable Manufacturing and Operations on Indian Railways. He stressed on the transformative initiatives required to be taken to identify potential of application of artificial intelligence and smart manufacturing while ensuring responsible environmental sustainability with a goal for carbon neutrality and attempts to be E-energy positive. He cited the example of initiatives taken in Indian Railways in RWF, MCF, ICF, Workshops and also the bio- toilets in Railway Stations etc. He appreciated today’s gathering of established players from Industry, academia, innovators etc., all under one roof.
Rajiv Kumar Vyas, General Manager, Rail Wheel Factory, Yelahanka, stressed upon the need for collaboration across industry and academia to find how technology can help industry meet the challenges of sustainable manufacturing and operations.
A K Tewari, Principal Executive Director Railway Board discussed some of the challenges faced by Indian Railways in providing environment friendly services to its customers.
Sanjeev Kishore, Principal Chief Mechanical Engineer, Ajay Singh, Chief Workshop Engineer and K. Raman Chief Workshop Engineer, gave presentations on various aspects of Smart and Sustainable Manufacturing and Operational Practices at RWF.
Other prominent speakers during the meet were – Dr. Haritha Saranga, Professor of Operations Management at IIM Bangalore, Sanjay Sahay, IPS , Additional Director General of Police, Police Computer Wing, Karnataka Police, Manickavasagam Chief of Projects at LCA Tejas Division, HAL, Bangalore Complex, Dr Lakshmi Iyer and Professor Sirish Venkatagiri from Christ Institute of Management, Bangalore, Nikhil Kaushik, co-founder Graviky labs, Rahul Saxena, CEO of CoBot Systems and Founder and Chief Analytic Officer of frogdata Bengaluru, Dr. Manish Kumar Senior Executive from Infosys, C. K. Srinivas, Manager Corporate Sustainability and Environment Development with Toyota Kirloskar, Bengaluru, Arun Kumar Deputy General Manager and Visesh Challa, Senior Manager from Federal Mogul Goetze India Limited.
The meet consisted of sessions chaired by experts from the fields of sustainable manufacturing processes and systems, sustainable design, Supply Chain Management, Industrial Automation and Data Analytics. The aim of this meet was to bring together persons from heavy manufacturing industries and academia to identify the way forward towards the goal of improving the triple bottom line of People-Planet-Profit. Papers presented were a combination of technical and managerial content.