Rockwell – Azzurro partnership to broad base clientele across multitude of industries

• Plans to boost the customers’ capacity and to bridge the existing skill-gap in Sri Lanka

By Nishel Fernando 

Rockwell Automation, the world’s largest company dedicated to industrial automation and digital transformation recently appointed Azzurro as a strategic partner in a bid to broad base its clientele across multitude of industries. 
In particular, Rockwell Automation plans to boost its customers’ capacity along with plans to bridge the existing skill-gap in Sri Lanka.

Rockwell Automation provides industry-leading automation and digitization solutions for utilities providers, miners and manufacturers in industries such as food and beverage, automotive and textiles.  Azzurro is a subsidiary of the Illukkumbura Group, which has over 30-year track-record in delivering transformative automation solutions across Sri Lankan industries.

“With them (Azzurro), we will be able to serve multitude of industries (in Sri Lanka).  We are already doing lot of knowledge transfers with our colleagues in Azzurro ,  but what we begin to do now is to build that capacity with our customer base in Sri Lanka , so they can build the business with greater confidence,” Rockwell Automation India Managing Director Dilip Sawhney told reporters in Colombo recently. 

He highlighted that Sri Lanka’s strategic location, skilled workforce and government support make the country an attractive destination for global companies such as Rockwell Automation.

“It does appear that we (Sri Lanka) are turning a corner; it’s a good time to look ahead and plan forward,” he added. 

The companies will work together to bring smart manufacturing technologies and services to Sri Lanka, aligned with the national focus on value-added manufacturing and digital transformation. Accordingly, Sawhney noted that operations will be conducted at a cutting edge facility which will be inclusive of an experimental demo center.

He outlined that Rockwell Automation along with its local strategic partner plans to play a key role in bridging the skill-gap in Sri Lanka 

“There’s supply of young and lot of young people who have interest in pursuing opptrunties around automation. There’s no doubt about it. Are they ready for the industry? … That’s where more effort is needed for industry ready training. 

We feel along with our partners, we have a role to play. It’s a must, because just having technology and not having the skills in the organization to absorb and deploy that technology, that is not a good combination, you need both. You need to have good technology and people who have that skill to deploy that technology. There’s gap. I think Sri Lanka is not along there 

We both are working on addressing the skill gap and increasingly what’s happening is that technology itself has been creating new scenarios by which that skill gap could be plugged by technology itself. For an example, using gen AI to address skill gaps which possible,” he elaborated. 

Speaking of the reluctance by certain sectors to adopt automation and digital transformation, Sawhney stressed that the demand needs to be created in such sectors.

“In some sectors, demand is subdued. In some sectors, we have to work towards creating demand. For an example part of why you lose production is, part of the reason why manufacturers become uncompetitive due to unscheduled downtime,” he added.

Rockwell’s broad product portfolio includes traditional automation products like Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs), Human Machine Interfaces, Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems, industrial sensors, and motion control systems as well as emerging technologies in areas such as IIoT, robotics, data analytics and cloud computing.

The two companies also acknowledged the growing emphasis on sustainability and environmental stewardship. They believe that smart manufacturing technologies can help manufacturers to be both more productive and more sustainable by reducing waste, increasing productivity and improving safety.

Commenting on partnership, Azzurro Managing Director Nihal Perera remarked that the presence of Rockwell would assure Sri Lankan Industries a safe and smooth passage towards the industry 4.0 with the adoption of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.