From Green Mandates to AI Mandates: How India’s Assemblers Can Drive Safer, Smarter Factories

According to a recent research report by the NGO SII Foundation, in the Indian automobile components industry alone, thousands of workers suffer crippling injuries every year. Some also lose their lives. More than 90% of the injuries result from machines lacking basic safety mechanisms like protective sensors, and more than 70% of the injuries occur because of poor maintenance of machines.

Similar dangers persist across India's wider manufacturing sector—from textile mills and food processing plants to defence component workshops. While we debate AI’s impact on coding jobs and call centres, a far more urgent and humane question stares us in the face: why aren’t we using advanced AI models to make India's factories safer, smarter, and more humane?


Factories Need AI More Than Offices Do

Modern AI has proven itself in office spaces—in HR platforms, design tools, and customer service chatbots. But the factory floor, where lives are on the line daily, remains largely untouched by this wave. That’s a grave oversight.

India needs industry-specific AI systems—tailored to understand the physical, noisy, high-risk conditions of Indian factories. The goal isn’t just automation or productivity, but worker safety, machine health management, and system resilience across the value chain—from component manufacturers to dealer yards.


Who Should Lead This Transformation?

India’s large industrial assemblers—whether in auto, rail, defence, or aerospace—are uniquely placed to drive this transition. Consider the country’s public-sector defence giants: HAL, BEML, BEL, GRSE. Each of them works with hundreds of small and medium component suppliers to build complex products like fighter-jets, tanks, war-ships, and radars.

These PSUs already demand quality compliance and technical specifics from their vendors. It’s time they go one step further—and encourage or mandate AI-powered safety and productivity systems within their supplier ecosystem.


We've Seen This Playbook Before

This wouldn’t be unprecedented. Over the last few years, several large Indian corporations have started nudging their suppliers to go green:

  1. Use renewable energy in production
  2. Track emissions and reduce waste
  3. Implement circular packaging practices

These green mandates were adopted in response to ESG commitments, investor pressure, and global best practices. And they're working—because the powerful players set the tone, and the smaller ones are following suit.

Why not replicate this approach for AI mandates? Especially when lives are at stake?


What AI Can Do for Factories

A well-designed, context-specific AI system can:

  1. Detect unsafe worker postures or movements in real time
  2. Shut down machines automatically when danger is imminent
  3. Predict machine failures based on vibrations, temperature, and wear data
  4. Simulate entire supply chains to avoid risky bottlenecks or transit delays
  5. Translate SOPs into local languages, giving workers real-time guidance
  6. Collaborate with humans, not replace them—via smart helmets, vision guidance, and safety alerts

In short, AI can become the guardian of the factory floor.


The Strategic Advantage for India

If done right, India can go beyond just applying AI—it can start building AI models that are trained on Indian conditions:

  1. Indian languages and literacy levels
  2. Dusty and noisy environments
  3. Indian labour laws and compliance norms
  4. MSME data structures and financing constraints

Such AI models won’t just serve India’s needs—they could be exported to other developing countries that share similar challenges.


Call to Action: Let the Big Assemblers Lead

HAL, BEL, Tata Motors, L&T, Maruti Suzuki, and others should consider this seriously. They already invest in quality and green compliance. Why not also become champions of AI-driven safety and productivity?

Offer incentives to upstream suppliers:

  1. Faster payments
  2. Larger orders
  3. Digital skilling support
  4. Joint pilot projects
  5. Preferential onboarding in new programs

These incentives can kick-start an AI revolution across India’s industrial MSME base—raising both safety and competitiveness.


Final Word: Screen To Steel 

It’s time we shift the focus of AI from the computer screen to the steel machine. In other words, it's time for AI companies to shift their attention from replacing white-collar workers to protecting blue-collar lives -- from office productivity to industrial dignity.

And it all begins with those who already hold the keys to India's sprawling industrial ecosystem.

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