Lucknow: Director General Quality Assurance (DGQA) hosted a seminar on Defence Ministry Schemes for Incentivising Defence Manufacturing and discuss them to facilitate the domestic defence industry.

The seminar focused on various new schemes launched and those being launched by the Department of Defence Production.

The Mission Raksha Gyan Shakti aims at inculcating IP culture in Indian defence manufacturing ecosystem. An Intellectual Property Facilitation Cell (IPFC) has been constituted which has trained more than 15,000 people on IPR and enabled filing of more than 1000 new IPR applications.

Another scheme, the Defence Testing Infrastructure Scheme (DTIS) will facilitate in setting up six to eight state-of-the-art test facilities by providing a Grant-in-Aid of Rs 400 Crore. This will provide a major impetus for domestic defence industries as defence testing and certification infrastructure is not available which is necessary requirement for manufacture and production.

DGQA has made available proof ranges and laboratories to the private industry for carrying out dynamic proof trials and development activities at nominal costs.

Another scheme is the Self-Certification and Green Channel Accord under which self-certification to qualifying Indian firms is expected to cut down inspection timelines and costs in the foreseeable future. These schemes are meant to target mature products where domestic defence industry has gained reasonable expertise in the technology deployed.

The Ministry has launched the Defence Export Promotion Scheme with the objective to provide an opportunity for indigenous manufacturers to market their products globally and to enhance annual defence exports to Rs 35,000 crores by 2025.

There is the Third Party Inspection Scheme under which manufacturers have the option to undertake inspection through Third Party agencies for non-critical defence stores manufactured by the private industry within India.

DGQA in partnership with BDL and C-DAC is showcasing the Evolutionary and Innovative Implementation of Industry 4.0 by use of IoT, Blockchain, Big Data and Artificial Intelligence for Production and Quality Assurance of KONKURS-M Missile Launcher at the ongoing DefExpo 2020.