Palkhivala Memorial Lecture 2016
Posted on: 01/Mar/2016 5:06:16 PM
With increasing deployment of automation and robotics the labour market is set to undergo a dramatic change, resulting in loss of some jobs and creation of new avenues of employment.
To cope up with the change ten years from now one ought to be fluid and flexible enough so that one can move across jobs and disciplines, said S. Ramadorai, Chairman, National Skills Development Agency, delivering the Nani Palkhivala Memorial Lecture on the topic, Are we ready for the fourth industrial revolution?
Citing an example, Mr. Ramadorai explained how the e-commerce industry was a threat to retail malls, but spurred the need for delivery staff. He elucidated on how amazon.com experimented with the use of Kiva robots to move boxes around its fulfilment centres and found the robots so useful that it bought the company that made them.
Amazon deployed 1,000 Kivas to work at its warehouses. It then ramped that to 10,000 robotic workers, then 15,000. At last report, Amazon had 30,000 robots working for it. To put that in context, Amazon has only 90,000 humans working in its warehouses. As of today, one in every four full-time Amazon warehouse workers is a robot, he said.
For young people this means the only job security will be the ability to learn new skills. Replacing humans with robots in manufacturing is a trend that we can`t stop or avoid, but we can be better prepared by being open to learning new skills, he added.
He also said that one must not be surprised to be greeted by a robot on a future visit to a retail store. They can traverse a shop`s aisles checking up to 20,000 individual stock keeping units with over 96 per cent accuracy compared to a manual audit of about 65 per cent. Not surprisingly Japan is investing to build 30 million robots to create a work force that can make them the number one manufacturer again, he said.
Ramadorai said the fourth industrial revolution will enable more intelligent machines, it will enable better health for all. Man`s eternal quest for life without disease, is driving convergence of nanotechnology and biotechnology resulting in more effective and prevention of disease, he said.
Talking about how the Indian Government needs to mainstream technologies he said, The Government needs to incentivise innovation in healthcare through Start Up India, he said.
Stating what India needs to do while entering fourth industrial revolution, Ramadorai said With a population of 1.3 billion predicted to become the world`s youngest population by 2022, the smart thing to do is to position ourselves advantageously for new things to come.
A wake-up call for youngsters to learn and upgrade their skills.
Mr. S. Mahalingam, Managing Trustee & Mr. R. Anand, Trustee, Palkhivala Foundation, were also present.
