Digitisation to reshape test and measurement

“Test and measurement is going beyond what it was, and it is now associated with data analysis, providing several benefits to the client.”
Jitendra Agrawal, Managing Director, The Motwane Manufacturing Company Pvt. Ltd.

Jitendra Agrawal, Managing Director, The Motwane Manufacturing Company Pvt. Ltd. discusses how digitisation is providing data analysis to customers for added value in test and measurement products, and the need for companies to adapt to the change in order to survive and sustain in the industry.

What are the opportunities and challenges in the T&M market?
There’s a huge transformation going on in the test and measurement industry. Digitisation is reshaping the test and measurement industry in a big way. Through it, authentic data is formed and customers expect to be provided data analysis that will be beneficial to them at various levels of decision making. The benefits include improvement in productivity, design, management, and ease of doing work, as well as bringing about change in processes and providing extended services to customers and other stakeholders. Test and measurement is going beyond what it was, and it is now associated with data analysis, providing several benefits to the client. With this change in the T&M industry, it is expected that the market potential will increase further.

As India is very good in software, with the advent of digitisation, Indian players like Motwane must play a big role not just domestically, but also globally. In that sense, it is a big market, but change is happening and disruptions are sudden. Those who adapt to these changes will go ahead and those who can’t cope with the disruption will slowly see the difficulties going forward. This is a huge challenge in terms of how we adopt digitisation in test and measurement. It requires transitioning your company from just a test and measurement company to an extended digital test and measurement company. The challenge is to shift the organisation from just the design aspect to the way it manages the customer.

How can T&M products contribute to sustainability and efficiency?
Currently, most of the T&M products provide only test data, but this data is not being used for analysis. Now with test data going digital, it is available in an analytical way and will greatly help to increase efficiency and sustainability. For example, when a transformer manufacturer installs an online monitoring system for transformers, this provides testing data in an analytical way that can be useful to various users in different ways. Based on the transformer performances, they can monitor continuously in different scenarios — conditions, temperature, geographies, etc. Also, for those who take an AMC for transformers, instead of physically going every time to test the health of the transformer, they can remotely understand which transformer is healthy and which is not healthy. They can focus on the unhealthy transformers rather than wasting time on periodically testing all the transformers. This improves productivity, sustainability, and efficiency. In the field of maintenance, the focus can now be less on periodic maintenance and more on predictive and reactive maintenance.

If you find something wrong, you can revisit the design, then understand and improve performance. As the data is available online and you can operate from anywhere, it reduces the turnaround time to address the issue. This improves the asset health index and ensures timely monitoring of the asset.

How are T&M products contributing to smart electricity?
T&M is crucial to set up automated substations and digitally monitored assets and transmission lines, which help to reduce breakdown times as well as manpower and capital expenditure that would be otherwise incurred due to replacement or repair of assets. Technological advancements in T&M are helping companies to address issues quickly. Bad or deteriorated assets can be replaced quickly and in a cost-efficient manner through proper use of T&M products. This helps in centralised asset planning. T&M helps to reduce costs and improve productivity and decision making in the electric sector, thereby contributing to smart electricity. Balancing the power grid also becomes possible through data analysis.

What are your new product plans?
Recently, at ELECRAMA, we had launched our online transformer monitoring system. We have also connected all our T&M products digitally so that one can get the data automatically without manual intervention. Moreover, we have started integrating third-party products that allow us open protocol. We have combined all these products and services on one test data platform that is called MOTWARE or Motwane Software.

Motwane wants to become a test data specialist that provides testing data analytics to monitor assets, reduce capital expenditure, improve efficiency, productivity, and also contribute to the power sector with upgraded technologies. We are embarking on the journey of digitisation and want our customers to also join us in this digital future that is already here.