Hexagon, a Stockholm-based firm that focuses on breakthrough technologies in autonomous and digital reality, has decided to ramp up its operations in India. Currently, the €5.3 billion revenue firm has its largest global software and R&D facility in Hyderabad and going forward, the company will be diversifying into hardware systems in India for various industries including automotive, oil & gas, power, aerospace, mining, infrastructure, utilities, smart cities, agriculture and defence etc., Navaneet Mishra, Senior Vice President & Head of Hexagon’s R&D Centre in India spoke to The Hindu. Excerpts:
You said Hexagon is diversifying in India, what are the new plans?
I am looking forward to diversifying our work further to go beyond software development and solutioning to hardware system level programming in the near future. Hexagon’s solutions span both hardware and software and our R&D hub in India primarily works on software development today. The diversification will be to go beyond software to also work on hardware system-level programming and similar such areas.
How do Hexagon’s R&D operations in India currently contribute to global operations?
Our R&D in India is the single largest such facility globally. We have a team of 2,100 engineers, technologists and solution makers who are working on breakthrough innovations in products and platforms. Interestingly, India is the hub to deliver R&D for all of Hexagon’s business units comprising Asset Lifecycle Intelligence, Safety Infrastructure, Geospatial, Geosystems, Mining, Manufacturing Intelligence and Autonomous Solutions. We have end-to-end coverage of the entire product organisation working on Product Strategy, Product Management, User Experience, Architectural design, Development, quality assurance Implementation Services and Support. Over the last 10 years, Indian operations have grown in scale with a diversified talent pool and therefore aligning with Hexagon’s global R&D vision.
What exactly do Hexagon engineers do out of India?
At Hexagon R&D in India, our people design and develop core products to support all business units of Hexagon globally. If you look at the application, the products that we create get deployed in Industrial Segments of Oil & Gas, Power, Automotive, Aerospace, Mining, Buildings, Infrastructure and Utilities, Smart Cities, Agriculture and Defence. To give you a gist: We have teams working on Asset Lifecycle Intelligence. They develop solutions for Engineering, Procurement and Construction companies and for the owners and operators of Large Manufacturing Plants. In Safety and Infrastructure, our teams are working on On-Call Dispatch and On-Call Records to support the whole gamut of public safety. We also have teams working on the infrastructure side, shipping products for public utility networks supporting electric, water and gas utilities. In Mining, our teams work on Collision Avoidance systems and 3D visualisation of mines. In Geosystems, we work on the latest apps for capturing scanned data, analysing it, and on seamless integration of office and field construction sites.
How important are digital twins in the automotive space?
Automotive Manufacturing’s future will be defined by the depth and precision of Digital Twin technologies. These twins will not only have to get precise dimensions and accurate placement of all parts – but they’ll need to be able to simulate all physical laws and material composition details for various scenarios. We know that among automotive makers, whoever can make digital twins of machines quickly and accurately and then simulate the production processes and end-products in a gamut of real-world scenarios – will emerge as the winner. Such production will be much more cost-efficient by saving on material wastage and physical iterations, and environment friendly.
Some 95% of all commercial vehicles and 75% of all cars in the world today are touched by Hexagon’s technology. Two of our business units–Manufacturing Intelligence (MI) and Autonomous Solutions (AS)–deliver core solutions for the automotive industry. While MI helps with the manufacturing of automobiles–Design, Simulation, production, Super precise measurement and Quality Assurance–the AS division offers solutions for precise positioning and off-road Autonomy for vehicle movement. Red Bull Racing, which has been a participant in many Formula 1 races, uses Hexagon Metrology solutions at each stage of their manufacturing to have the parts perfectly precise, which is critical to the safety and performance of the cars.
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