In an exclusive interview with Indian Business Times, founder of YuDash Systems – Sunand Mittal highlights the importance of Industry 4.0 solutions in this fast moving world of data analytics and insights to run manufacturing facilities efficiently.

Industry 4.0 has become a part of the modern lexicon due to the relevance it holds in this age of technology. It is the buzzword within the manufacturing fraternity across the globe for quite some time now. In the Indian context, YuDash Systems Pvt Ltd is among the upcoming organizations to watch out for because of the tremendous experience of its founder, Sunand Mittal in the field of Embedded Systems, Manufacturing and Software. Here is an exclusive interview he did with Indian Business Times to share his thoughts on the features of this technology.

Q. 1  Mr. Mittal, as the founder of YuDash, let’s begin by telling the readers about what is YuDash  Systems offering as a solution. Let’s try to answer this in detail so that the potential clients if they are reading this article can understand immediate benefits.

A.  YuDash Systems works in the field of Industry 4.0 solutions for the Indian Manufacturing fraternity. Our first product YuFourIA, is a truly wireless smart factory solution. Integrated dashboards of manufacturing KPIs are available on laptops/mobile devices. With real-time information available at a click of a button, the customers can discover opportunities for improvement and cost savings in factory operations.

In a typical manufacturing environment, the OEE (Overall Equipment Efficiency) plays a crucial role in deciding the potential of revenue, according to the capabilities and utilization of the machinery. It is a key parameter to monitor the utilization of the equipment and tells the management where is room for optimization. The information is directly derived from the machines using self-developed IoT devices and available as live dashboards and KPI reports. The data is also stored in the YuFourIA cloud platform. This enhances the accessibility and usability of the entire system. Apart from this, the user also receives alerts through SMS/Email regarding process/product quality parameters, power management among other things. With OEE optimization, a company can achieve 10-15% cost savings through improved asset utilization.

Most SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises) have Accounting and some CRM (Customer Relationship Management) as well. But, mostly manufacturing ERP is not being used due to cost, lack of customization and challenges in deployment on factory-floor. YuDash solves this problem by tuning YuFourIA as light-weight manufacturing ERP with hybrid user and machine inputs. The learning and experience of 12 years of experience of running successful manufacturing unit has been put to use for lean UI (user interface) and ease of use.

If I have to summarise these key advantages of YuDash solutions over the traditional process:

• There is no wiring on the factory floor because we use completely wireless systems (WiFi, LoRaWan, GSM, Bluetooth) depending on the use case. The IoT-enabled devices are attached to the machines separately.
• Our products are industry standard-specific which ensure that any machine in any manufacturing facility can be turned into a “smart-enabled” asset.
• Being a cloud-based platform, our system eliminates the need of setting up a physical PC server at the factory.
• Timely alerts per SMS/Email prevent some of the issues even before they occur. This is also known as “Predictive Analysis.”
• It connects the users and machines by using hybrid inputs from the real-time data of machines and users.
• For large enterprise customer with IT servers and ERP in use, we offer on-premise solution and API (Application Programming Interface) integration with main ERP.

Q. 2  What are you actually digitalizing? Since manufacturing is a bit of an unorganized sector and it can get tricky to streamline such an audience to use particular digital systems for data analysis and insights, how have you managed to rope them in?

A. The traditional way of collecting data is manual. A user will fetch some part of data that he/she thinks is relevant and manually prepare a report to submit to the higher officials. As one would imagine, this leaves many gaps at various levels where the information could get compromised. Not to mention, the time taken to do all this is a lot. With YuDash solutions, the devices give out data all the time which is constantly stored on the cloud. The real-time data with critical alerts is also directly sent to the devices of the concerned authorities. Being digital, there is no scope for error and the time for transmitting this data reduces drastically.

Q.3  Who were your first clients? And how are they using your solutions? Are the solutions tailored to each organization or do we have a standard system that everyone can use?

A. Interestingly, our very first project landed us in a high-performance Wire & Cable company catering to Defense and Aerospace. We deployed YuFourIA to 12 extrusion lines to monitor the OEE. It was not long before we discovered that 2 machines were not working at their full capacity. Apart from that, gaps in the night shift operations were also found. After resolving these issues, the OEE of the process was enhanced by approximately 10%. To monitor parameters like input power quality, DG usage, power factor, UPS health, we also offer YuFourIA smart energy solution tuned for factory operations.

Q. 4 Have you managed to raise funds or is it a self-sustained business?

A. YuDash Systems is a boot-strapped start-up. We target to be a self-sustained business by the end of FY2021-22 through organic growth. We plan to approach investors and raise funds in the next financial year for quick expansion across geography and new solutions.

Q. 5 What are your plans to penetrate the market? Since you are into IoT and customized digital solutions that offer real-time insights, which other sectors can YuDash tap into apart from manufacturing?

A. Well, the D2C market strategy seems to be the best way going forward. In any field, the word of mouth is your best advertisement and promotion strategy. But for that, you need to ensure complete customer satisfaction. We offer a 30-day trial period to our new customers. During this time, all customizations, machine integration and hardware deployment are done by the YuDash team. We charge a very nominal charge for this activity. As our solution is modular and scalable, we can do a quick solution prototype.

We also plan to develop channel partners across cities for deployment. We look forward to a partnership with solution providers in Industrial Automation, Panel manufacturers. Besides manufacturing, our solution can be applied to many other B2B verticals. I can think of hospitals and pathology labs, with many critical operations. In fact, we recently deployed our solution to monitor the usage of a newly installed Oxygen plant at a hospital run by an NGO.

We are working on a new product YuSpot  for “Smart Terminal”. It integrates user terminal with barcode printer, weighing scale, length counters and testing tools with automatic trigger. Besides manufacturing, it will be applicable for hospital, laboratories, trading and warehouse.

Other sectors are applications like smart building and EV space.  We are already exploring solutions for elevator monitoring for apartments and offices.

Q.8  What was the thought that inspired you to launch YuDash?

A. I have a diverse background in Technology and Manufacturing. After my Computer Science Engineering, I worked in Embedded Software for around 9 years and hold 4 U.S. patents.  Subsequently, I moved to manufacturing and entrepreneurship at a family-owned company catering to Defense and Solar markets. During this tenure, I worked on various projects for process improvements, mechatronics, industrial automation, ERP and recently Industry 4.0 projects. Finally, last year, I decided to fully concentrate on the domain of Industry 4.0 and founded YuDash Systems Pvt Ltd. Effectively, I moved from working in manufacturing to work for Indian manufacturing and contribute towards the “Make in India” mission. Some people said it is crazy to leave an established business and start a new venture at age of 40. To which my answer was “The biggest risk is not taking any risk”.

Our company name and logo symbolize Zero To One, inspired by an ancient Indian binary system. With a strong foothold in technology, we aspire to be the preferred digital partner for the Indian Manufacturing Industry.

This was an exclusive interview of Sunand Mittal, the Founder of YuDash Systems Pvt Ltd with Indian Business Times. We hope that this inspiring tale of an engineer-turned entrepreneur at the age of 40 gives our readers the motivation to follow their passion too.  After all, it is never too late to follow your dreams.

Also read: Meet The Founder Of Omnipresent, Aakash Sinha; The Man Who Aided India To Reach The Moon.