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“We have a lot of data from mines to market and this needs to be thoroughly analysed to produce better diamonds in future”

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PCQ Bureau
New Update

How does technology aid manual labour in diamond manufacturing?

The specialised software for the diamond manufacturing industry provides innovative options in which a diamond can be produced from raw material. The planning stage, where the number of diamonds to be cut and polished from a raw diamond are marked, is where more creativity is required and this is where technology helps the most. On the other hand, the cutting and polishing stages require more skilled labour. As a result, more value is now added to the diamonds produced which I believe could be in the 10-15% range.

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What are the employee related challenges faced by the industry?

The salary growth for both planners and polishers has been satisfactory but still the industry faces a turnover of 8% mainly because the pay scale is perceived to be lesser as compared to other industries.

What kind of IT solutions could help the industry in future?

We have a lot of data from mines to market and this needs to be thoroughly analysed to produce better diamonds in future. For this, we need a lot of BI reports. We do have software to track inventory, sales and accounts but all this is in independent silos and needs to be stitched together to get business insights.

As a parting thought, what is the outlook for the Surat industry in general?

Surat has very small to very large diamond manufacturing units that employee 10-15 to 10,000 employees on an average. The focus on diamond manufacturing can be gauged from the fact that six out of ten diamonds produced in the world come from a 5 km radius in Surat. Still lots needs to be done in technology to improve our sales and marketing efforts. There is support from industry to technology vendors through funding and by sending diamonds for research.

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