AI training for India Inc. is moving beyond the office. While the focus has been on white-collar artificial intelligence training programmes so far, initiatives to upskill blue-collar shopfloor workers are now gaining momentum.
Workers and managers at steel manufacturers, automotive companies and tea plantations are getting trained in AI tools and languages such as Python. The aim is to reduce cycle times, scrap, errors and material loss and bring down the impact of human errors.
“AI adoption in the blue-collar workforce is gaining traction,” said Atrayee Sanyal, chief people officer at Tata Steel Group. “We started our pilot in predictive maintenance and now AI models are used to prevent fatalities and injuries.”
Tata Steel’s permanent blue-collar workforce stood at 31,794 at the end of FY25. The company is using AI to sensitize workers regarding the risks in their roles.
“...our AI systems can identify workers who are not wearing helmets or personal protective equipment at the workplace, trigger alerts to enable further actions, which is critical to ensuring their safety,” said Sanyal.
Over the past 2-3 years, companies across sectors have hammered home the importance of training employees on AI. The use of AI among white-collar employees has pushed companies to relook at their business models and make changes in their billing rates because clients are now aware that fewer people are required for a project.
This has led to redundancies as well and companies globally and in India have announced layoffs on the back of AI implementation.
Specialist profiles
Then there are also cases where IT companies, which employ white-collar workers in both permanent and contract roles, are creating AI specialist profiles. At least five of the country’s top 10 IT services firms—Tata Consultancy Services Ltd, Infosys Ltd, Wipro Ltd, LTM Ltd (formerly LTIMindtree) and Persistent Systems Ltd—introduced or expanded AI-focused roles over the past year, more than in the previous two years combined, Mint reported on 8 April.
In HR parlance, blue-collar jobs are those that involve manual labour, often in the manufacturing and construction sectors, while white-collar employees are in more professional, managerial and administrative roles.
At Harrisons Malayalam (HML), the RPG Group’s tea and rubber plantation business, about 15% of the blue-collar and general staff in its factories are working with AI solutions to check green leaf quality and reduce energy consumption. In the group’s tyre-making company Ceat, AI tools are used to detect “quality deviations early in the process before the tyre is completed” to help reduce scrap and loss of material.
In the case of Ceat, the business house said the aim of AI training is to help in productivity.
“Improvement in personal productivity and daily task management through GenAI and Agents (bots) being WIP (work in progress), thus releasing substantial bandwidth and reducing turnaround time,” the RPG Group said in an email response to Mint.
In the auto sector, Tata Motors has 35,000 blue-collar employees, of which about 70% are expected to complete AI-linked training over time.
Learning programmes
“We have introduced structured, practical learning programmes, starting with Excel for basic data analytics and progressing to Python training for technicians in quality and testing functions, enabling them to build simple programmes for data analysis and problem‑solving,” said Sitaram Kandi, chief human resources officer at Tata Motors.
The automaker uses AI for safety-critical and repetitive tasks.
“Digital tools such as the Poka-Yoke mechanism help ensure consistent quality, and technicians trained in analytics and Python are developing applications that enhance efficiency and shopfloor safety,” Kandi said.
Research and advisory firm Convergence Catalyst, which tracks the impact of AI, detailed out the effect of AI in blue-collar workers and the challenges around this set of upskilling.
“As AI primarily gets into customer experience, customer care, supply chain management and logistics, the blue-collar workforce is trained to use AI tools to manage the workflow better. But AI has not replaced any part of the workforce so far,” said Jayanth N Kolla, founder and partner of Convergence Catalyst.
The challenge that companies will face will be with regard to the urgency of AI training. Kolla noted that the learning curve will be less steep than it is for the white-collar workforce.
“The white-collar workforce is directly impacted and there's a motivation from this segment to get trained on and upskilled on AI. AI is coming for white-collar jobs much more directly compared to blue-collar jobs. Knowledge workers are better equipped for AI upskilling because they were previously trained in digital technologies," he said.