Engineering and Designing as a concept were more to do with innovation and individual engineers, specialists working on a thought and discovering better products or the better way of doing the things rather managing the process. It was also concerned with visualization and design of a structure, layout etc. considering various physics and motion related parameters.

This was a prerogative of western countries who invested a huge amount of money in R&D. It was also our necessities like military, weather conditions etc. Due to an aging population, reduction in demand in western countries, India is well positioned to work on making Engineering and Design service as a next big opportunity after IT.

India can be a ground for series of Innovations especially in the area of Engineering and Design. There are a large number of institutes and newer branches of Engineering like Mechatronics, Robotics which are providing the required skills.

As more and more manufacturers will shift to India, the world is expecting India to provide required resources in the area of Engineering and Designing and innovate newer products, materials, and services. Collaboration and coordination in the area of Engineering and Designing across the world will become easier and better with higher and cheaper internet bandwidth available across India.

Engineering giants of the western world are focusing on India and Indian Engineers are expected to meet their needs like we have done in IT and Pharma.

Need for conversion of products to services and services to products would require re-designing and re-packaging of the products and services.  In the new world of technology and millennial consumers, older ways of delivery and consumption of products and services may not work.

Technologies like IoT, AR/VR will be used in an innovative manner to alter and/or completely re-design the way the products and services are delivered and consumed. This will require high-end engineering and designing skills and also a collaboration between the best brains available across the world to make the things happen, the way they are expected to.

Cloud technology is becoming a great leveler and is triggering the need for redesign of the services (productization of services). IoT, RFID etc are leading to fresh thinking on the role of applications like MES, SCADA, embedded systems. These will undergo huge change and will give new birth to newer, cheaper and powerful systems.

The Engineering service is an area which will be provided by companies specialized in this business, rather than the manufacturers of the products themselves.  Innovation is likely to be outsourced by the Product Owners and Marketers to Engineering service providers who would be specialized in this area.

Outright sale of the product, licenses, and services will get re-packaged as per use, subscription model with predefined scope and delivery and this will happen even as users will continue to redefine the expectations which will be different and disruptive.

Disruption which was earlier cyclical and long lead will become erratic and duration will become shorter.

Businesses will require a large number of Engineers and Scientists to respond to these disruptions & re-design the production services.