Pandemic has hit us hard and has reset the entire manufacturing lookout. Thinking in the positive aspect, the pandemic has given us a chance to grow stronger, more resilient, and resourceful in terms of operation, maintenance, and sustainability. There was a point in time when people were perceiving Industry 4.0 as an opportunity for their businesses. The table has turned, and now, Industry 4.0 is a mandate as the concepts under its umbrella are the ones that will help in making manufacturing more resilient, stronger, and resourceful. AI is one of the core elements of Industry 4.0 and it encompasses machine learning, deep learning, and classical AI techniques.
The Centre of Excellence in Advanced Manufacturing Technology, led by Professor Surjya K Pal, has been very proactive in this context from its inception. They have come up with a low-cost AI-based solution for product quality inspection. Professor Pal mentioned that they strived hard to make it low-cost so that it can be leveraged by the MSMEs. This sector is the “Engines of Growth”, and they need low-cost and effective solutions to energize their production scenarios. The solution incorporates a low-cost webcam for capturing images of the product; the quality of which is enhanced in real-time via AI techniques followed by machine vision analyses to inspect the dimensional features and presence of scratches and dents. The Centre has also developed an Industry 4.0 solution for real-time monitoring and control of weld quality, which has been filed as a patent, jointly with TCS. They have also developed an ML-based predictive maintenance software for complete diagnostics of the machine elements. This has been developed jointly with Tata Metaliks and Tata Sons.
Very recently, Professor Pal delivered a lecture on “AI in Manufacturing” to NIT Sikkim, where he mentioned that manufacturing is having a huge potential for implementing AI techniques. Robots and human working together on a job, sensor-driven real-time control of processes, AR/VR for operation and maintenance, etc. are the new paradigms, which the manufacturing industries are looking forward to. He also mentioned about customized training programme on “AI in manufacturing”, which they have been working on jointly with the Centre of Excellence in Artificial Intelligence.
With an accuracy close to 98%, the solution can measure the dimensional features of the job, and also it can inspect the presence of scratches, dents, etc., in a job. It takes only approximately 12 seconds for the analyses to be complete. The accuracy check and timeliness of the solution have been guaranteed by testing it on different types of jobs. Researchers are working further to reduce the time.
The research group included Prof. Surjya K Pal, Prof. Debashish Chakravarty, research scholar Debasish Mishra, technical staff Pravanjan Nayak, and intern Ayan Banerjee from Jalpaiguri Government Engineering College, who has filed a patent for the system and made it available for MSMEs to license the technology.
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.”
The innovative technology developed by Prof. Surjya K Pal, professor in-charge at the Centre of Excellence in Advanced Manufacturing Technology in association with TCS will acquire real-time information about the welding process through multiple sensors and enable online control of weld quality by means of cloud-based communication with the friction stir welding machine.
Explaining the new technology, he said, “Our multiple sensor process 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.”
The Centre of Excellence in Advanced Manufacturing Technology was set up through the support of the Department of Heavy Industry of the Ministry of Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises, Government of India, along with a consortium of top six industry members with the aim to stimulate the innovation in advanced manufacturing for boosting the capital goods sector. Tata Consultancy Services is a key industry partner at the Centre.
IIT Kharagpur is all set to build Eastern India’s first Industrial Research and Innovation Unit for MSMEs and Start-ups. The Groundbreaking Ceremony of the Industrial Research and Innovation Unit of the DHI Centre of Excellence in Advanced Manufacturing Technology at IIT Kharagpur was held in the august presence of Shri Babul Supriyo, Hon’ble Minister of State for Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises on February 3, 2019.
