India has accorded high priority to the small industry sector, and yet this sector is perceived by many as technologically backward and lacking in professionalism. On the other hand, there are many success stories too in this sector. A common factor which emerges is that the success story is always connected with infusion of technology into the operations, for example, automation in production processes.
Broadly, the benefits of automation, such as improvements in efficiency and management agility, are well-known to entrepreneurs in the SME segment. However, deployment of automation brings in its own challenges, as far as its realisation by SMEs is concerned. The very first is the affordability, then comes the benefit awareness, the application knowledge, and lastly, efforts and additional investments required for maintaining and updating that technology. Most of the time, this prohibits SMEs from the list of options, due to the tight working capital they have. And many businesses go
