Sustainability Is No Longer Seen Merely As A Compliance Mechanism: Infosys' Gopikrishnan Konnanath

Do you think the sustainability mindset for organisations has become more prominent over the last two years?  
Yes, absolutely. The sustainability mindset was in existence however, recently, there has been an emphasis on creating value through sustainability. It is no longer seen merely as a compliance mechanism, but can bring in a lot of efficiency, productivity and business value.  

At Infosys, how are you enabling a smart, lean, and green, paradigm for engineering? 
Thank you. The campus I am in is a completely green campus. We have planted 3,00,000 trees here in the last 15 years. Most of our buildings are smart buildings. We are way ahead of what we were to achieve by now.  

In terms of engineering, the first thing that comes to mind when people speak of sustainability is smart spaces. We are partnering with organisations to take smart spaces as a concept to our clients. This, is of course, driven by aspects such as waste and energy management, etc. For this, we need to collect and study data, analyse it, and understand what we need to do to implement some of these initiatives. We are tracking and monitoring to understand the efficiency that is brought in. One of the organisations we are partnering with is Microsoft.  

We are also working on circular PLM, which is essentially identifying how to extend the end of life of a product, or go into the recycle process. This is done as early as the design stage of the product. 

The third focus area for us is energy transition – moving from IC to Hydrogen based or EV based vehicles in mobility. As we speak, we are engaged with an aviation startup in Europe to convert their combustion engine to run on Hydrogen. We also have environmental, social, and governance (ESG) as a service. We have a mechanism to define the maturity levels of an organisation’s ESG initiative. We use that and guide them on the roadmap ahead. This is not always easy, as every organisation has a legacy and a way of doing things. There is a certain amount of inertia when it comes to change. This is where we showcase the efficiencies to create that change.  

Please tell us about enabling efficiency and data reliability with the power of IoT and Blockchain. 
If you look at the evolution of traditional engineering, it has gone from mechanical product engineering to electrical to connected devices.  

Let’s assume we want to define an interconnected cockpit system for mobility. First comes the design with the desired features. The concept will then be detailed, with materials, space, and placements and a lot of this is stored in the PLM system. After that, you have the Manufacturing Execution System (MES), which essentially says how these products will be manufactured, the routing sequence, etc. Then the product is launched, and the service happens. The key fact here is how the PLM system is interconnected, and the data is available with the MES system. The ability to smoothly integrate this system where cloud plays a role is required, along with edge applications that can give real-time live data.  

When such integration is in place the collaboration becomes better, and there is access to analytics. In the concept stage a virtual twin can be created, and after production, data can be used to track and improve efficiencies in the twin. This is the direction in which the industry is moving.  

We are not just doing a lift and shift of this to the cloud. We look at the aspects of the applications. We look at the real-time impact that can happen with these applications when you move to cloud. The effect of the cloud is not just technology efficiency, but application integration becomes much better. In manufacturing systems, the way to make sure that data is more effective is by integrating and moving into cloud.  

Further, we also have the concept of a live enterprise. Here, we endeavour to get the right kind of data, which helps in making the right decision, automatically or with interventions from leaders from different functions. We have built an open-source platform where we can collect data from different platforms, to give a business process an end-to-end view of where efficiencies need to improve. This is something that we are building.