Representative End User Clients
Representative Automation Clients
Representative Software Clients
Utthunga participated as a Silver Sponsor at ARC Advisory Group’s 23rd India Forum titled Winning in the Industrial AI Era on July 10-11, 2025, that saw the convergence of over 300 delegates. An interesting joint presentation was made by Dinesh Thukaram, Chief Solutions Officer, Utthunga and Utthunga’s customer Jagadeesh Aratoli, AGM Enterprise Solutions, Suprajit Automotive. Dinesh discussed how digital transformation initiatives contributed to advancing operational excellence at Suprajit. He then invited Jagadeesh to offer his insights on the key drivers behind these efforts, as well as the process of identifying solutions and selecting appropriate technology partners and tools to support the company’s business objectives.
In today’s competitive manufacturing landscape, digital transformation is no longer optional - it’s essential. Companies striving for operational excellence are increasingly turning to smart manufacturing and Industry 4.0 technologies to optimize performance, reduce downtime, and enhance decision making. A compelling example of this shift is Suprajit Automotive’s journey with Utthunga, where strategic implementation of IoT and real-time data analytics has revolutionized their production operations. At the end of the session there was an interactive panel discussion. The joint presentation is now available on YouTube and can be watched here too:
Suprajit Automotive: A Global Manufacturing Powerhouse
Founded in 1985 and headquartered in Bangalore, Suprajit Automotive has grown from a single-product, single-customer operation to a global supplier with 28+ plants across India, the UK, USA, Germany, and China. Serving major OEMs like General Motors, Audi, and Volkswagen, Suprajit manufactures a wide range of components for two-wheelers, four-wheelers, and off-road vehicles.
The Challenge: Managing Complexity Across 100+ Assembly Lines
With seven plants in Bangalore and over 100 assembly lines in a single facility, Suprajit faced significant challenges in maintaining real-time visibility and operational efficiency. The need for just-in-time delivery to customers like TVS and Bajaj made downtime costly and unacceptable. Manual monitoring was no longer viable, and the company needed a scalable, intelligent solution.
Utthunga’s Approach and Solution
About Utthunga
Utthunga is a Bangalore-based product engineering and industrial solutions company with 18 years of experience, specializing in turnkey projects, process and plant engineering, and smart manufacturing for industrial OEMs and end users. With global presence in the US, Europe, and Japan, it blends deep domain expertise with advanced IT capabilities, collaborates across a strong partner ecosystem, and actively contributes to industry bodies like OPC Foundation and OPAF. Its turnkey solutions include mission-critical areas like sustainability, energy management, and decarbonization, blending deep domain expertise with advanced technology to serve enterprises across domains such as Energy, Steel & Mining, Utilities, Pharma and Regulatory, Automotive, and Infrastructure.
Suprajit partnered with Utthunga to implement a modular and scalable IoT platform. The strategy began with a pilot of 20 lines and expanded to over 100, leveraging AWS cloud infrastructure and ThingsWorx for data processing.
Key features of the solution included:
- Real-Time Monitoring: Immediate alerts for line stoppages, productivity shortfalls, and quality issues.
- Data-Driven Decision Making: Automated root cause analysis and loss quantification.
- Performance Dashboards: Visibility into best-performing lines, engineers, and supervisors to foster healthy competition.
- Quality Control: Automated rejection tracking using sensors, ensuring accurate data and accountability.
- Historical Data Storage: Long-term archiving of process parameters for compliance and traceability.
Measurable Gains in Productivity and Quality
The results were transformative:
Productivity Increase: From 7,500 to 11,000 units per plant within three years.
Enhanced Quality: Real-time rejection tracking eliminated manual errors and improved data accuracy.
Faster ROI: Minimal investment in micro-PLCs yielded returns within six months.
Employee Engagement: Real-time performance data motivated operators and supervisors to improve continuously.
Why This Matters for Manufacturing Leaders
Suprajit’s journey exemplifies how smart manufacturing and digital transformation in manufacturing can deliver tangible business outcomes. By starting with a clear platform strategy, embracing modular architecture, and focusing on usability and change management, they achieved scalable success without disrupting operations.
The Path to Industry 4.0 Starts Here
Whether you're managing a single plant or a global network, the principles behind Suprajit’s transformation with Utthunga - real-time visibility, modular scalability, and data-driven decision-making - are universally applicable. Partnering with experienced solution providers like Utthunga can accelerate your journey toward operational excellence.
Views Expressed at the Panel Discussion on Transforming to 21st Century Operations
What are the key considerations before embarking on smart manufacturing and digitalization programs?
Dinesh: Actually, with a lot of hype in the market, we often end up talking about new-age technologies, but sometimes forget why we are doing it. That’s why we always try to start the journey by asking the customer what business outcome they expect and what their key business problems are - what is actually triggering them to consider digitalization. Start with the business goal. Understand the problem you’re solving before choosing technology. Build a long-term vision, but implement in small, scalable steps to avoid fragmented solutions.
We try to understand the big picture or horizon for the next three to five years, but we always approach it incrementally. This could mean delivering and testing something in three or six months, and then adding more. I think what happened at Suprajit was a success because it was done incrementally, and everything was kept scalable. That’s how we generally prefer to start a digitalization journey.
What are the high-impact areas for Industry 4.0 in automotive?
Jagadeesh: Industry 4.0 utilization is mainly focused on the production area, where products are manufactured. We wanted to understand how track parts are produced, along with quality rates and cycle times. These parts are the bread and butter of the industry, and these metrics directly impact efficiency and ROI in smart manufacturing.