Make in India IPL
Indian Premier League or IPL is one of the best sporting start-ups in the recent history, which created a “few billion USD” enterprise and teams worth multi millions in a very short span making it a lucrative business venture for every ambitious business man.
Cricket being the only secular religion in the subcontinent, the valuation didn’t raise any eyebrows. But what made people sit up was the success of IPL and its thumping success commercially. There was a complete change in the perception of the game – it was no more just an entertaining game but a lucrative business venture as well.
With the commercial value of IPL going up, branding became a part of the IPL league. Brands began dominating the sporting event, ICC tournaments and even umpires hat and blazers sported brands.
IPL is now racing towards being the super bowl of Cricket in the times to come.
IPL brought out certain fundamental queries on the game, is the game important or the format of the game? Is IPL becoming bigger than the game itself? With huge commercial success (ROI) coming its way, IPL would be perceived as being bigger than the game itself ! The emergence of mongoose cricket bat is one example.
We can draw some similarities between the IPL scenario and the manufacturing industry. The battle of supremacy between controllers and post processor – is the controller more important than the post processor or Vice versa? The response to the query may vary, based on the perception of the manufacturer, but the questions are always there to be answered.
IPL brought huge opportunities to young cricketers in terms of professional success and also the monetary gains. Many subsidiary business grew along with it from event management companies to product companies. The controller market brought path breaking changes and now market offers wide range of controllers to address the aspirations of the market and manufacturer . The cutting tools, coolants, compressors also brought many technological advantages, this cascade of supply chain brought complete generational shift in the manufacturing process.
The emergence of choice is leading to a situation wherein customers are buying controller specific machines than vice versa. In some of the specialised industrial segments like railways and aerospace manufacturing, even the OEM’s enquire with their suppliers about the controller specific machines. Some MTM controllers may have more lines of code than in cam software’s itself.
This has led to revolution based evaluation with CAM software’s. Manufacturer no longer look at the software which makes the right product in a short time, their focus is whether the product fits into the IT landscape. The CAM software’s may have engineering friendly features but the utility of the software depends on the quality of customised post processor. Post processor builds perfect tunnel between controller and the imagination of the programmer and makes programmer to drive the controller’s capacity. Like in IPL emergence of Hawk eye technology and stump camera have mitigated the human error levels to nil.
Post processors are customized by CAM software’s OEM itself or they provide post processor templates to manufacturer. Many CAM OEM’s
put specific efforts in educating, hence making the manufacturer to adopt to the customized post processor. But most of the CAM software’s doesn’t teach the manufacturer as how to customize the post processor. Is the customization done to help manufacturer to achieve the optimum result or is it pre sales test cut euphoria like 3rd umpire for every decision.
The way in which IPL allowed Indian and international players to capture the imagination of cricket lovers across the world, similarly manufacturing companies are also looking at controller and post processors which provide maximum monetization (ROI) while, new sponsor Make in India is eager to create Mexican wave and 3D printing as the cheerleaders.
