It helps to set new trends in India’s Advanced Manufacturing Sector; Supports in remotely controlled factory operations, real-time quality correction during production.
Lucknow, NFAPost: Recognising the new business need, IIT Kharagpur has partnered with TCS to develop novel Industry 4.0 tech. The joint efforts will help in setting a new trend in India’s advanced manufacturing sector.
The decision comes at a time of Covid-19 pandemic when staffing firms have imposed new restrictions due to hygiene and social distancing norms. Cloud computing and remote collaboration tools have proven to be useful during the pandemic.
But the benefits of controlled operations have a bigger impact especially in the context of Atma Nirbhar Bharat in delivering quality output at low costs.
The present innovation upgraded the industrial process of friction stir welding to a multi-sensory system of Industry 4.0. It has not only set the course for remotely controlled operations in the Indian industrial sector but has enabled real-time quality check and correction during the production process.
Manufacturing technology
The innovative solution was developed by IIT Kharagpur’s Centre of Excellence (CoE) in Advanced Manufacturing Technology. The institute has gained support from the Department of Heavy Industry and the Government of India.
Prof Surjya K Pal from the institute who is professor in-charge at the Centre of Excellence in Advanced Manufacturing Technology has developed the solution. It can acquire real-time information about the welding process with the help of multiple sensors. It can even define quality control of weld using cloud-based communication.
Commenting on the new initiative, Prof Surjya K Pal said the solution has multiple sensor process which involves various signal processing and machine learning techniques to predict the ultimate tensile strength of the weld joint is fabricated.
“This technology is connected with a vast experimental knowledge base to conform to a standard system and prediction of the weld joint strength. Any defect identified during the monitoring procedure is corrected in real-time by sending modified parameters to the machine thus ensuring the standardized quality of the process,” said
“Welding is at the heart of any industrial operations. If we can improve the weld quality in real-time during batch production we can reduce rejections in post-production sample checks,” opined Prof Surjya K Pal.
Make in India
Emphasizing on the need for such technologies to achieve the ‘Make in India’ goal, Director Prof. Virendra K Tewari remarked, “While we are aiming to boost indigenous production and exports, our primary goal should be quality output with minimum disruptions. Be it, consumers, in India or abroad, these are two basic needs our industrial sector must address for procuring orders in large volumes. At IIT Kharagpur’s Centre of Excellence in Advanced Manufacturing Technology, we have set our target to bring to the forefront indigenously developed industry 4.0 technologies to support our industrial sector to achieve this goal.”
Industry partner TCS views such innovation as an enabler of technology-based transformations in the country, especially in overcoming challenges called out by the pandemic.
TCS has played a key role in giving direction as a tech enabler. The embedded system, robotics, IoT, ICME platform teams from TCS Research and Innovation are working closely with IIT Kharagpur’s CoE to create an AI-driven prediction system.
TCS Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer K Ananth Krishnan said the remote friction stir welding machine quality control via multi-sensor fusion developed by Centre of Excellence (CoE) in Advanced Manufacturing Technology at IIT Kharagpur is a case in point.
“The Embedded Systems & Robotics, IoT and ICME platform teams from TCS Research and Innovation are working closely with IIT Kharagpur’s CoE towards AI-driven prediction/control of weld strength using a scalable and robust platform. Academic partnerships are an important part of TCS Research and TCS CoInnovation Network (TCS CoIN) in creating real-world solutions with scientific rigour,” TCS Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer K Ananth Krishnan.
