We transformed our Kalwa facility into a globally-benchmarked Digitalised Factory
Published on : Monday 24-02-2020
Bhaskar Mandal, Head – Digital Industries, Siemens Limited, responded to a few questions from Industrial Automation. Excerpts…
What are the key focus areas for Siemens Digital Industries in India?
Siemens Digital Industries is an innovation and technology leader in industrial drives, automation and digitalisation. Driving Digital Transformation in discrete and process industries is our key focus with the Digital Enterprise portfolio being at the core of our offerings. Digital Enterprise provides companies of all sizes with the right products, along with consistent solutions and services for the integration and digitalisation of the entire value chain.
Developing a new product, planning a new plant, or producing with the help of digital tools creates a detailed virtual image, the digital twin. With the Digital Twin we enable manufacturing enterprises to create a precise virtual model of a product or a production plant. It displays their development throughout the entire lifecycle and allows operators to predict behaviour, optimising performance, and implement insights from previous design and production experiences. Thanks to our comprehensive domain expertise and optimised tools, Siemens is the only company that offers this holistic approach for merging the virtual and the real world. With this, we enable our customers to reduce their product development times while at the same time increasing the flexibility, productivity and environmental efficiency of their production processes.
Siemens also is promoting low cost automation, especially for SMEs. What is the impact of this?
The digital transformation continues to be a challenge for many medium-sized manufacturing companies. Streamlining processes to save time and cut costs has always been a key focus at SMEs. In today’s fast-moving markets, it is a more pressing issue than ever. Digitalisation promises lower costs, improved production quality, flexibility and efficiency, shorter response time to customer requests and market demands, and also opens up new and innovative business opportunities. Indian manufacturers have the unique opportunity to blend the availability of advanced manufacturing technologies and to create extraordinary competitive advantage by digitalising their manufacturing work flow. The need of the hour is for SMEs to take the lead in adopting new technologies and make it an integral part of their business strategies. Those that are successful in understanding the power of digitalisation and harnessing it across their businesses will lead this new wave of growth.
Talking of SMEs, most of these are saddled with legacy plants. Can these be transformed into Smart Factories?
To address how SMEs can utilise digitalisation to address growing manufacturing challenges, we transformed our Low-voltage Switchgear factory in Kalwa, into a globally-benchmarked Digitalised Factory in 2017. It is now a perfect showcase for SMEs in terms of mastering increasing product and process complexity, reducing time to market, adapting to changing market requirements, deliver individualised products and secure continuous product improvement.
This factory is the most advanced switchgear manufacturing facility in India and is in sync with the government’s ‘Make in India’ and ‘Digital India’ initiatives. It is a unique story which Siemens is showcasing to India. Here, all the data is transformed in a digital format. This is a completely digital workshop that starts at the level of product R&D all the way through manufacturing simulation and then building the manufacturing facility from the optimised and simulated product and plant data. This is what makes it unique. The digitalised factory is proof of how adopting digitalisation will help Indian industry, especially small and medium enterprises (SMEs), achieve manufacturing excellence.
What are the tech trends that are most likely to resonate in 2020?
Trends and developments in the world of IT like artificial intelligence, edge computing, machine learning, and digital marketplaces as well as new forms of collaboration are providing additional momentum and are changing industrial workflows. This is the next stage in the digital transformation.
In the near future, we see far greater dovetailing of IT and OT (operational technology). Our MES systems have already demonstrated the first steps for how that can work. And we’re also hard at work on developing integrated platforms, for example with edge computing. Edge Computing and Artificial Intelligence can be used to increase availability and productivity and to optimise Overall Equipment Efficiency (OEE), thus enabling closed loop analytics. Artificial Intelligence can also support engineers to significantly reduce programming times and virtual reality enables to reduce travel costs in new ways of global collaboration. Industrial communication, e.g., Industrial 5G, is crucial for these applications and we are hoping to see some early deployment of this soon. With a Digital Enterprise Suite, our customers can begin investing today in future-proof solutions for the step-by-step implementation of Industry 4.0. Which means we’re joining forces with our customers in thinking ahead to the future of industry.
What were the highlights of Siemens at the recently concluded ELECRAMA 2020?
At ELECRAMA 2020, Siemens displayed its strengths in electrification, automation and digitalisation, with a deep understanding of the Indian market to help create sustainable value for businesses and societies. From the manufacturing perspective, we had showcased some of the most cutting-edge technologies and solutions including:
- Digital Enterprise Portfolio – In addition to our strong combined offerings around drives, automation and industrial software, we’re adding value by bringing in overarching elements like MindSphere, our open IoT platform, as well as industrial communication, industrial security, and industrial services. With this portfolio we’re uniquely positioned in our market – integrating the virtual and real worlds – by supporting our customers’ activities along the entire industrial value chain, from product design through production engineering, operation, and services.
- Artificial intelligence in SIMATIC – With the new S7-1500 TM NPU (neural processing unit) module for the SIMATIC S7-1500 controller and the ET 200MP I/O system, AI is finding its way into automation with Totally Integrated Automation.
- Virtual commissioning of automation solutions – From the controller, to an individual machine, all the way to complete production lines, our solutions for virtual commissioning allow machine builders and plant operators to respond to various validation questions quickly and reliably with the aid of simulations.
- Machine Safety – Solutions for applying machinery directive and safety standards, achieving functional safety for machines and plants
- Cyber Security – portfolio of solutions especially for the security of industrial facilities
- IT/ OT Integration – Industrial digitalisation network strategies together that support greater performance, visibility, flexibility, and security, and
- Energy Efficiency – Highly reliable energy efficient motors and drives for various applications.
