Symbiosis Institute of Business Management Pune and Swansea University United Kingdom jointly host online seminar series 

Pune, 26th October 2021: After the successful seminar series in 2020, SIBM Pune along with Swansea University, Wales, United Kingdom is hosting the second seminar series from August 2021 to July 2022 on the theme ‘The Digital Future for Business & Society: Emerging Perspectives on AI, Blockchain and IoT’.

This seminar series is hosted jointly by Professor Yogesh Dwivedi, Professor of Digital Marketing and Innovation; Founding Director of the Emerging Markets Research Centre and Co-Director of Research, School of Management, Swansea University, Wales, UK and co-hosted by Professor Ramakrishnan Raman, Director SIBM Pune & Dean – Faculty of Management, Symbiosis International University and Director Strategy and Development – Symbiosis. The series is moderated by Prof Dr.Santosh Gopalkrishnan who is a professor in finance at SIBM Pune.

This seminar series is jointly supported by: Centre for Technology, Innovation, Management and Enterprise (TIME), The University of Kent, UK; Digital Marketing and Analytics SIG – Academy of Marketing; Grenoble IAE-Graduate School of Management – a Grenoble INP school of the University of Grenoble Alpes; The e-Business and e-Government SIG – British Academy of Management and The UK Academy for Information Systems (UKAIS).

This seminar series presents various perspectives from a number of leading expert speakers to highlight the opportunities and challenges posed by the rapid emergence of these transformative technologies in various industries and sectors ranging from agriculture, finance, healthcare, manufacturing, retail, supply chain, logistics and utilities, all potentially being disrupted by the onset of these technologies.

The 4th session in Seminar second series was on the topic “The Digital Future for Business & Society: Emerging Perspectives on AI, Blockchain and IOT”. This was seminar was streamed online on 26th October 2021, were Professor Dr. Sven Laumer, Schöller Endowed Professor and Chair of Information Systems in the School of Business, Economics and Society at Friedrich-Alexander University, Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany and Deputy Director of the Dr. Theo und Friedl Schöller Research Center spoke on “How Can Artificial Intelligence Enhance Car Manufacturing?” and Prof Dr.Santosh Gopalkrishnan who is a professor in finance at SIBM Pune moderated the session.

Prof. Dr. Sven Laumer spoke on the much needed and upcoming area of the use and implementation of Artificial Intelligence in the domain of Car Manufacturing. Germany, considered as home to some of the best-engineered cars globally, is where Dr. Laumer and his PhD students carried out this research study in collaboration with Siemens which is one of the major suppliers of components to the industry. Dr. Laumer and his team reviewed 73 peer-reviewed publications that identify the application of AI in the automotive manufacturing process via a Delphi Study with 39 leading experts including data scientists, AI engineers and process experts with 25 different companies across the globe from various sub-domains including car manufacturing, OEMs, machine builders and system integrators. 

The study pointed to 20 different AI use-cases for automotive production including autonomous optimisation of robot trajectories, drone routing and human-robot integration / collaborative robotics among others. The Top 4 areas where Artificial Intelligence can be implemented with the highest business and economic value have been found to be Predictive Maintenance, Visual Quality Control, Object Labelling/Tracking and Sequencing Optimisation. Some of the other findings of this study shows that there are clear signs of an early development phase of Artificial Intelligence within the automotive domain and strong participation in the study is also reassuring of the fact that car manufacturing companies have started to engage with AI.

Post the Seminar, Dr. Laumer also answered questions on how the implementation of AI in the manufacturing setup would lead to a replacement of worker-jobs to a higher grade/quality and that taking participative decisions by the top management of the company would be needed. 

Overall, he mentioned that AI in the manufacturing industry, though currently at a nascent stage, will soon take over the industry to help us deliver more advanced, intelligent and smart cars for a better future ahead for all stakeholders involved.