‘Harnessing data properly can change the manufacturing industry’
Robert Bosch Engineering and Business Solutions Private Limited is a 100 per cent owned subsidiary of Robert Bosch
GmbH, one of the world's leading global supplier of technology and services, offering end-to-end Engineering, IT and Business Solutions. With over 18,000 associates, it’s the largest software development centre of Bosch, outside Germany, indicating that it is the technology powerhouse of Bosch in India with a global footprint and presence in the US, Europe and the Asia Pacific region.
Jacob Peter, Vice President - IT and Business Solutions, Robert Bosch Engineering and Business Solutions (RBEI) spoke to BW CIO World about how the company transformed itself over the years, the cutting edge work they do for Bosch global companies and the new focus areas.
Q. What does RBEI do in India? How does it contribute to Bosch globally?
Robert Bosch Engineering and Business Solutions Private Limited (RBEI) is a 100 per cent owned subsidiary of Robert Bosch GmbH. We are an IT and R&D services provider for Bosch, and in fact 90 percent of our business is done for Bosch; 10 per cent of our business is for external clients, in IoT.
We do engineering (R&D) and IT under the same roof (in Bengaluru), for all the Bosch divisions globally. There is skills integration for IT and product engineering. We have almost 18,000 people in India. That’s 4,000 people on IT and 14,000 doing product engineering. RBEI is present at two locations: Bengaluru and Coimbatore. We have R&D centres in Vietnam and Mexico too.
We do R&D and product development for automotive, white goods and all the other businesses of Bosch. Bosch is a tier-1 supplier for all the OEs, manufacturing electronic control units for automobiles, and different systems. It also manufactures white goods like washing machines and dishwashers, sold under the BSH brand. Bosch is also into thermos techniques for heating and security systems (cameras).
Bosch’s IoT strategy is based on three types of connectivity. We have Connected Mobility for cars and vehicles, Connected Home, and Connected Buildings and Energy. We also have Connected Industry.
Q. Can you tell us how the company has transformed itself and about the new focus areas?
RBEI has been in India for more than 25 years, having set up the engineering centre here in 1991. The parent company Bosch, has been in India since 1924. Like any other MNC coming into India, the initial direction was cost arbitrage. But as we went along, Bosch realised that this centre is capable of solving problems for the Indian market. There are products designed and engineered from here specifically for the Indian market.
As we went along, we realized that India has a very competent workforce that could be leveraged; it is not just the cost arbitrage.
A topic that is much talked about these days at Bosch is data analytics. In fact Industry 4.0 and smart manufacturing is all about data from sensors. It is about capturing the data and what you do with it. If you can do this well then you can change the manufacturing process. So that becomes a fulcrum for a lot of innovative work.
There are three competency centres for Bosch and one of them (data analytics) is in Bengaluru. Another topic that has got a lot of attention is UX / user interface / user experience. So the UX team is in Bengaluru and Germany. The third competency centre is for artificial intelligence.
So that’s the transition. From cost arbitrage to engineering for the local market to competence centres in the new technology areas.
Q. How does an engineering company like RBEI play on its strengths and go about solving problems for consumers in the market?
Take connectivity for instance. If you look at what is happening in a country like India, smart phone penetration is skyrocketing. We are talking 400 mn by the end of 2017. Internet is also becoming ubiquitous. The challenge is to make a value proposition for the end user. There are many aggregation scenarios that are quite popular and very successful too.
Here’s an example of how we go about solving a problem. The customer asked us, can we realise some benefits by having connectivity in the vehicle? This was for a fleet of commercial vehicles.
For us, it was easy to add sensors. By pulling out the data and analysing it on a real time basis we observed that the fuel efficiency of the fleet could be increased by two interventions: by a targeted maintenance of 20 percent of the vehicles. Secondly, the way the vehicle is driven.
The obvious challenge is how do you get data out of the vehicles like acceleration, braking, engine performance – and how do you co-relate it? This is essential for an accurate analysis.
There will be many use cases like this. This will be driven by the cost optimisation that will be required by the industries and the demand from users. The users are requiring certain experiences.
Q. What are the competencies required for an IoT implementation?
To solve any kind of (IoT) problem you need people who work close to the sensors, who have a capability of working with the thing and pulling data out through sensorisation. Once the wireless interface is done you need the ability of a stack called Identity Management, Device Management – to understand where the devices are and to have a secure way of communicating with them. This is done through Bosch IoT Suite. We also have the Bosch Internet Cloud. So the data from the sensors goes to the cloud and the analysis and hypothesis is done by a data scientist. So you need three types of skills or three types of competencies to solve a problem: product engineering competency, a competency on the IT framework, including IoT Suite and cloud, and the last one is analytics.
