German multinational Bosch has evolved over the years from being merely an auto component manufacturer to being a provider of solutions for energy management and developer of sensors for smart phones.

In an interview with BusinessLine , Volkmar Denner, Chairman of the board of Management of Robert Bosch GmbH, and Michael Bolle, President of the corporate sector for research and advance engineering, share their views about the kind of work being done out of India and globally. Excerpts:

You spoke about the challenge of getting the right talent and issues concerning entrepreneurship. How do you view the entrepreneurship skills in India and the kind of contribution that engineers out of India are making to Bosch globally?

There is a lot of collaborative research happening among R&D centres across Bosch’s centres worldwide.

For example, Shanghai and India have collaborated together for the IoT (Internet of Things) solutions specially for the Chinese market.

India currently has a very high competence in everything that is related to software development, which Bosch uses already.

About 12,000 engineers work in the R&D centre there in modern software development.

In this respect, India and its domain is quite strong and is significantly contributing to the rest of the Bosch Group.

We see a lot more business ideas coming out of India.

There are several such innovative ideas within Bosch that originated in India.

It is not a strong movement yet, but we see a bright future in the country.

Will Bengaluru get a similar kind of campus that you have put up at Renningen, which is multi-disciplinary and supposed to be the cradle of innovation?

Well, we already have a very modern engineering site in Bengaluru and in other places like Coimbatore. So, I think what we have built in Bengaluru is very modern and fitting to the needs of the Indian colleagues.

Of course, this kind of campus in terms of size may not be there in Bengaluru but it serves the local needs very well.

We know that Bosch is aggressively implementing ‘Industry 4.0’. To what level will automation happen in your sites across the globe?

Yes, we will use the technology for external customers and also for our internal plans. Bosch has about 250 own plants and we heavily employ Industry 4.0 technology for them.

… but will that mean less workforce?

It doesn’t mean less workforce. We will increase productivity and competitiveness of the plant by using a new generation of robots that can assist human beings.

But we certainly do not believe that factories will be free of human beings. That’s the old story of automation. The modern story looks quite different.

You have announced an investment of about $100 million in India. Are you going to make further investments there?

This is the budget for the year. But we haven’t fixed the budget for 2016. Also, you must know that Bengaluru is the second largest centre after Germany. So, there will be investments across all units. We are doing everything across all our plants to increase productivity in Indian plants. India has had a long tradition of strong manufacturing and we believe we want to be as competitive as possible, which means competitiveness of cost per piece.

What lessons have been learnt from the Volkswagen fiasco and do you believe it has dealt a blow to the diesel engine market?

Well, right now it is all about the research plant and hence I would not like to talk about it. (Bolle’s comment): It certainly has not dealt any blow to the diesel engine market. One episode does not define an industry.

We know about the kind of research at your R&D centres across the globe, and you talking about making customers your business units. But will you, at any point of time, do R&D for other companies?

No. But that is because we have a mandate that everything we do will only be for Bosch.

We do have a start-up platform, but that again will be very collaborative. We will give it space, money, administrative services and infrastructure for these start-ups.

Do you think the kind of R&D you are doing would have been possible if you were a listed company?

For me personally, in this company in the (current) organisational form, there is a lot of power and it is also a big source of motivation for people. It helps us to have the opportunity to back our really long-term decisions.

You do not have to look at the next quarterly report every time. I am convinced that this is the success factor of the company.

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