The Hindu Business Line : Gaps in knowledge-based industries

Since 1988, global high-technology exports have been growing at 13 per cent, which is nearly double of world merchandise exports. Yet, India’s export basket continues to be dominated by low-technology goods that are highly price-sensitive, low value-adding, and slow moving, rues International Competitiveness & Knowledge-based Industries in India edited by Nagesh Kumar and K.J. Joseph ( www.oup.com).

The book, based on a study of 4,000 enterprises, has chapters on knowledge-based industries such as electronics, pharma, chemical, automotive and non-electrical machinery. While the software and IT (information technology) service sector has shown good growth in a sustained manner, “the hardware sector, both computer hardware and other electronics equipment and components, has shown a decelerating trend,” notes the chapter on electronics.

To help face competition in the ITA (Information Technology Agreement) regime of the WTO (World Trade Organisation), firms may be provided “access to needed components, raw materials and capital goods at zero duty,” the chapter suggests. Another useful thought is about scaling; “it is important to analyse the export competitiveness of the small scale sector that today accounts for nearly 40 per cent of the total output and to examine the implications of ITA on such units.” Given the domination of contract manufacturers in the global electronics industry, it may be advisable to offer special incentive on a one-time basis to attract a few such large manufacturers, propose the authors. They also call for policy measures to facilitate import of capital goods in a big way.

“As world leaders are phasing out their electronics production there is an opportunity for Indian firms to buy up such production plants leading to substantial reduction in fixed cost.” These imports can enhance the cost competitiveness, it is argued, but one wonders if any such late-stage entry into the industry would help us in the long run, especially with fast changes happening in the tech arena.

Helpful reference.

A technology company that delivers packages

Mahwah is a township in Bergen County, New Jersey, US, with a population of about 25,000, and situated near the Ramapo Mountains. This is where the world technology headquarters are located of UPS, a 100-year-old company with close to $50 billion in revenues, and employing more than 4 lakh people.

“Mahwah’s nine IBM mainframes, and six more located in a data centre near Atlanta called Windward, process twenty-seven million instructions a second, track fifteen million packages each day, coordinate the operations of an entire airline, collect and distribute package delivery data from 96,000 DIADs, and connect 1,49,000 work stations through 8,700 servers,” narrate Mike Brewster and Frederick Dalzell in Driving Change ( ww w.HyperionBooks.com).

DIAD stands for ‘Delivery Information Acquisition Device’. It has a built-in GPRS and CDMA radio, an acoustical modem to facilitate dial-up access if necessary, and 802.11b wireless local area network connectivity to enable transmission in a UPS centre, informs http://pressroom.ups.com. “The DIAD IV also features a Bluetooth wireless personal area network and an infrared (IrDA) port to communicate with peripheral devices and customer PCs/printers.”

By using the DIAD, UPS eliminates the use of 59 million sheets of paper per year, one learns. “The DIAD IV is the most comprehensive tracking device in the delivery industry, combining data collection and transmission technologies, digital signature capture, extensive expandable memory and rugged construction to withstand extreme temperatures and hard falls.” UPS is ‘a technology company that delivers packages,’ say the authors. Here are a few facts to back that statement: ‘Big Brown’ owns ‘the largest IBM relational database’; it is ‘the biggest user of cellular phone minutes in the world’; it is ‘one of the biggest purchasers of PCs in the world’; and it employs ‘4,000 of its own software engineers’. It may be hard to believe that only less than two decades ago, ‘UPS was basically run manually, with package data written down on paper’.

What if ‘a meteorite took out the entire Mahwah facility’? “Critical process would be taken over in Windward, and vice versa.” Everything is mirrored. “That means that there are two, or sometimes more, of every critical support system: two utility power feeds, seven generators, four unlimited power supply systems, two chilling plants cooling the computers and redundant data storage facilities. Even the innards of the main data storage devices have double panels in case the switches on one panel don’t work.” With one exception…

“In Mahwah, the only thing there are not two of in the data centre is janitors – and that’s a precaution as well. For security reasons, only one cleaning person has access.” Jim Medeiros, vice-president for information systems shared services at UPS, has this to say: “The sole reason for my existence is to make sure our systems never go down. All our Internet systems, all of our package systems, all of our airline systems, can never go down.”

Looking forward, the key technology questions engaging the company are these: “which technologies will be important for the next ten years, and how should UPS leverage these technologies to stay ahead of the competition?” As answer, UPS annually invests “$1 billion in technology – not for technology’s sake – but to support its business strategy.”

Makes for an ideal gift packet, delivered double-quick!

Image-editing software

Digital cameras have revolutionised photography and are one of the main forces driving the need for products like Photoshop Elements, write Jeff Carlson and Craig Hoeschen in ‘Photoshop Elements 5’ ( www.pearsoned.co.in).

“Typically, these cameras come with their own software to help you browse and manage photos – but don’t even bother breaking the seal on the disc’s envelope,” they advise. Welcome to Adobe’s powerful, easy-to-use, image-editing software, the authors invite.

The book has chapters on creating and managing images, quick fix edits, fixing and retouching photos, changing and adjusting colours, working with layers, filters and effects, painting and drawing, preparing images for the Web, saving and printing, and sharing your images. A discussion of ‘creative techniques’ talks about panoramas, animated GIFs and so on.

A book that should be visible on the visual worker’s shelf.

Tailpiece

Heard from the bottom of a manhole…

“Ouch… I was busily SMS-ing when this happened! But why did you fall on top of me?”

“Was busy capturing your fall on my mobile phone camera!”

dmurali@thehindu.co.in