Industry 4.0: Reimagine Asset Management with New Gen Technologies

#Altair #Hindalco #AtanuPramanic #AssetManagement #NewGenTechnologies #ProcessIndustry

Team Pro MFG Media

Looking at future-proofing digital transformation for the new manufacturing world, the third edition of the Pro MFG Digital Transformation Senior Leadership Roundtable, powered by Altair had Mr. Atanu Pramanic, Jt. President and CIO, Hindalco Industries, as one of the esteemed speakers at the event. The IIT-Bombay and IIT-Indore led IndAC- SM is the esteemed knowledge partner for the Pro MFG Digital Transformation series.

With digital technologies playing the enabling role for the manufacturing industries, Mr. Pramanic elaborated on how assets could become proactive participants in their own management. In this context, he also spoke about the practical challenges of integrating new technologies with legacy operations that are spread geographically. While highlighting the importance of systematically collecting data from machineries and equipment that are of different versions or statures, he said that connecting these machines and bringing them onto a standard IoT platform is important. “The key is to make those machines from various generations talk to the same platform that we have today.”

Throwing light on generating ROI in terms of implementing new technologies, Mr. Pramanic said that the benefits could be tangible as well as intangible. He explained the idea through an actual example from the process industry, where through capturing data and analysing pumping equipment, the team was not only able to increase utilisation and uptime, but was also able to reduce cost. In terms of convincing the shopfloor staff to accept a new technology, data again proves quite useful. “By putting the collected data into a module and coming up with the output helps in convincing the production line. With data in hand, we can look at bridging the gap to improve productivity as well as efficiency and also to bring down the overall TCO,” Mr. Pramanic stated.

Talking about the tools used for the decision making process in the pumping equipment example, Mr. Pramanic said that the team had used one of the latest VI platform, where they had implemented the ‘What If Analysis’. While admitting that large and legacy manufacturing entities will not have many data scientists or people with data analysis skills internally, they are also gradually getting the young generation skilled in those areas while taking help from external partners initially. “So capturing the data, working it out on one of the latest projects and trying out some of those ‘what if analysis’ is what practically we are trying to do right now,” he said.

Speaking in the context of prescriptive asset management, Mr. Pramanic said that it has not been adopted yet. However, with the amount of data collected and the model that the team has come out with in terms of prescriptive situations, it will soon get into the prescriptive mode. “It is very much possible; we are trying out in multiple operating areas. To start with, we would try it out in some of the areas that are not so critical to the main production line. But while implementing these changes or new ideas, it is very important to have a convincing inclusion from the shopfloor folks,” he said on a concluding note.

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