Focus on Industry 4.0, emerging markets: HP

Houston, March 20 (IANS) HP could be targeting the $12 trillion business in manufacturing as it pushes, fine tunes and works furiously on its 3D printing technology -- what it terms Industry 4.0, said Dion Weisler, President and CEO of HP.

"We had plastic to start with and now metals. So from zero dollars, the goal here is to transform industry and for that you have to deeply understand the industry you need to transform," he said in the course of HPReinvent 2019, the company's largest global partner event.

Essentially that means moving from building prototypes to actual manufacturing.

One of those areas is automotives. "We are at an inflection point in automotive engines because industry is moving from combustible engine to electric vehicle and 3D printing lends itself to that production," said Weisler.

At the base is evolution of customers.

The way HP looks at change is: rapid urbanisation and their demands; millennials are taking over and entering the workforce; 95 per cent of these millennials are living in emerging economies.

This is where China and India become significant for HP, both being significant markets for it, said Christoph Schell, President 3D printing and digital manufacturing said.

"China is the largest market for digital market. India is a super interesting country -- because they can bring manufacturing back to their country," Schell said.

Pressure applies on the need for innovation as digitisation and hyper globalisation happen at great speed alongside urbanisation. That's because customers require transformation faster. Meanwhile, market growth also requires mergers and acquisition.

While there exists an opportunity to leverage transformation, the M&A market also provides new opportunity as the acquisition of Samsung's print business did.

"M&A will be used at the right time," Weisler said.

HP, as indeed anybody in the same business would be looking at the following ground reality referred to by HP officials:

Economic impact -- By 2025, there will be 850 million households who will need technology. They will also need higher wages. This will be accompanied with 16 per cent shortage in high skilled labour. Now nearly half of 850 million households will be in India and China.

Energy sustainability -- In the case of India, the fastest growing economy in the world, by 2035 there will need to double power output.

Changes in compute model -- Even Cloud systems would need a limit, by 2023, it would occupy 164 zettabytes of space which would be impossible to do. This will require a radical shift in data.

Digital manufacturing -- which will offer one of the biggest opportunities.