Katie Cook, . Senior Vice President for Industrial, .
Energy & Natural Resources Business Unit at Cyient.

Katie Cook, Senior Vice President for Industrial, Energy & Natural Resources Business Unit at Cyient, elaborates on the company and its plans for Indian market..

Could you provide an overview of the engineering services provided by Cyient?
Cyient was founded in 1991 and this year marks the 25th anniversary of our brand promise?Designing Tomorrow Together.? Today, we are a $472 million company built on our Values FIRST principle (Fairness, Integrity, Respect, Sincerity and Trust). We provide Mechanical Design, Embedded Software & Electronics, Electrical Engineering, Semiconductor Design, Manufacturing Engineering & Aftermarket services across industry verticals such as Aerospace & Defence, Rail, Off-highway & Industrial, Oil & Gas, Medical Technology, Power Generation, Communications and Navigation. Along with engineering services, we have a manufacturing unit - Rangsons Electronics, which manufactures electronic components (PCBAs, cable harnesses, etc) and mechanical components (high precision components and assemblies). Hence, Cyient can provide end-to-end services to our customers from conceptual design and detailed design to prototyping and large-scale manufacturing for their products.

How strong is your global and Indian footprint for providing such services?
Cyient has 38 global locations spread across North America, Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia. In India, we have eight delivery centres at Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Noida, Visakhapatnam, Kakinada and Mysore.

What are the types of analytic solutions you provide for off-highway equipment? Could you please elaborate with some case studies and examples?
Our advanced analytics solutions focus on four key functions: descriptive, diagnostic and predictive analytics as well as data visualisation. For off-highway equipment OEMs and operators, our primary focus is developing equipment monitoring and process optimisation solutions. We help improve throughput, improve asset availability and aid in mitigating surprise equipment failure. A recent predictive maintenance solution we designed for a client utilised an ensemble of advanced analytics solutions that could predict when the assets? components would fail, allowing the client to optimised maintenance schedules. Our solution led to an 8 per cent decrease in maintenance costs, 10 per cent reduction in asset downtime and a 13 per cent improvement in overall asset productivity.

In another example, we prevented critical component failures for off-highway equipment and developed a health scorecard model using machine learning techniques. This health scorecard system was integrated into the manufacturer?s condition monitoring system. This solution resulted in a 10 per cent reduction in maintenance costs and 15 per cent decrease in unplanned downtime events.

In the Indian context, how are you able to meet the customer requirements of adaptation, affordability and seamless implementation?
We work with a number of global companies that want to develop products for the Indian market. By combining together domain expertise on engines, hydraulics, electronics, structural design, analysis and technical publications with value engineering, should cost, manufacturing and sourcing capabilities; Cyient can address all facets of the design and localisation process. We are often able to achieve additional cost economies by producing many of the components and assembly process in India.

Do you have any engagement with India?s automotive industry? If yes, could you share the details?
We work indirectly in the automotive sector via our Semiconductor and Advanced Analytics practices, along with our manufacturing group.

What is your take on your analytics solutions, by using Telematics for remote monitoring and taking maintenance decisions for off-highway equipment with specific reference to mining and construction activities?
Cyient is working closely with agriculture, mining and construction companies on integrating telematics data with other M2M sensor data. One consistent theme is minimising unplanned downtime for core assets, mainly due to the various associated costs: safety concerns with non-scheduled maintenance in the field, lost productivity/revenue from non-functioning assets, expedited shipping costs for replacement parts, replacing parts before end of life, etc. An analytics partner should not only understand the data element, but also how to implement a solution based on the client?s architecture and business requirements. Increasingly, we are helping companies utilise a blend of local infrastructure, cloud and edge-based software and hardware to achieve the right level of insight into their business and differentiate their products and aftermarket services from competition.

How do you visualise the market size for your services in the country since Make in India initiative by our government is attracting many global manufacturers to set up production facilities in India?
We foresee a lot of activities towards the Make in India initiative in the coming years. With the Make in India initiative attracting global manufacturers to India, Cyient can be an ideal risk sharing partner for OEMs. We have already made strategic investments and can support the Make in India program by helping companies in design, manufacturing and in product transitions. With the help of a strong ecosystem in India, we can help manufacturers realise their ambitions through the Make in India initiative.

Are you planning to diversify your services portfolio? If yes, in what aspects?
Cyient is decisively transforming its industry portfolios to become a ?Design-Build-Maintain Partner? that can fulfill more needs, solve more problems and take more ownership across its customer?s value chain. Recently, we have taken steps towards building our strength in the manufacturing space through an acquisition. More specifically for the Heavy Equipment & Industrial BU, our focus will be to diversify into advanced software, sensor, electronics and telematics (ASSET), analytics, data, IoT, and electronic manufacturing portfolio.

What is your company?s vision 2020?
Cyient?s 2020 vision is to be a major tier-1 supplier in selected industries in the next ten years through: executing S3 (services, systems and solutions) and equitability to four stakeholders (customers, partners, investors, associates) that make us successful, and the Values FIRST culture.

We understand that your Chairman has been appointed as the Honorary Consul for Federal Republic of Germany. What will be his role in this position for India and Germany?
As an Honorary Consul, Mohan Reddy will work towards further strengthening the collaboration between the two nations; promoting culture, industry and commerce, facilitating investments, educational exchange and enhancing goodwill. The office of the Honorary Consul will also provide limited consular assistance in the state of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana and support the German citizens within the two states.