The current placement-driven engineering education model has been pushing traditional engineering students towards the IT sector. The right kind of regulatory oversight to ensure interdisciplinarity is necessary to stop engineering colleges from becoming the fabrication centres of footsoldiers for IT and emerging technology markets
While IT and emerging technologies are the driving engines, core engineering expertise is the necessary railroad for Industry 4.0
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IT (Information Technology) and emerging technologies such as AI (Artificial Intelligence), Big Data, IoT (Internet of Things), 5G, and so on are driving the digital transformation of the industrial landscape globally. Such a transformation dubbed the fourth industrial revolution—Industry 4.0—is envisaged through bottom-up solutions built from the core engineering contexts within respective industries. For example, in the case of the manufacturing sector, IoT is expected to interconnect production equipment in the factory floors and enable contextual predictive maintenance solutions, utilising the data gathered from such equipment. In the case of the energy sector, services for maintaining grid stability and efficiency are envisaged based on the high volume of data from interconnected smart sensors installed on the transmission and distribution infrastructure. In this scenario, solutions are designed using IT or emerging technologies but with a deeper appreciation and understanding of the core engineering capabilities.
[This article has been published with permission from IIM Bangalore. www.iimb.ac.in Views expressed are personal.]