DHI Centre of Excellence for Advanced Manufacturing

Saturday Manufacturing Talks by CoE in Advanced Manufacturing Technology

The Centre of Excellence in Advanced Manufacturing Technology of IIT Kharagpur is conducting a mega event titled “SATURDAY MANUFACTURING TALKS”.

Join Online Every Saturday, from 8:30 to 9:30 pm IST
https://iitkharagpur.webex.com/iitkharagpur/j.php?MTID=m00ba321c9f62cf6aeb29a33edab1b210

It is planned to be a year-long series of webinars on topics of advanced manufacturing. It will stress the need for an industry-academia collaboration perspective.

The topics include but not limited to :
– Robotics, Automation, and Use of AI and ML in manufacturing
– Simulation in manufacturing
– Specialty materials in manufacturing
– Additive manufacturing
– AI in Supply Chain
– Design of Experiments in engineering

Watch Video for insights of Industry 4.0 related work at Centre of Excellence in Advanced Manufacturing Technology, IIT Kharagpur

A few highlights of the event are as follows:
– Webinars will be delivered by both academicians and industry professionals – this will help in broadening the reach and outlook
– Speakers would be Alumni of IIT Kharagpur in academics and industry (India and Abroad) – this will help in understanding the research being conducted globally on advanced manufacturing

For more information please visit: https://www.coeamt.com/index.php or write to coeamt@iitkgp.ac.in

Low-cost Solution for Advanced Manufacturing

IIT Kharagpur researchers develop a low-cost AI-based Industry 4.0 solution for real-time metrological inspection

In an initiative undertaken by the Centre of Excellence in Advanced Manufacturing Technology at IIT Kharagpur, researchers are on a mission to make AI & ML applications affordable for India’s industrial sector including MSMEs. They have developed an innovative system consisting of a low-cost imaging device and an AI-enabled software for real-time metrological inspection. The developed system can be utilized in the production line to check the quality of the jobs and get instant results.

Explaining the benefit that MSMEs will draw from such an innovation, Prof. Surjya K Pal said, “The MSMEs mostly rely on manual inspection of the jobs produced in a batch where a few samples are randomly selected and checked manually. Accordingly, the entire batch is either rejected or accepted, which lacks effectiveness and increases the cost of production. The potential of the developed solution can be leveraged to inspection of each job in a batch, in real-time, and at a very minimum cost.”

This AI-enabled software will enhance the image quality captured by the low-cost camera at par with a high-quality camera output and process the image in real-time. Further, it automates the acceptance or rejection of production jobs and delivers the outcome for real-time managerial insights.

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.

“Automation is one of the key aspects of digitalization and is also the need of the hour. The vision of manufacturers revolves around three things that are how fast can manufacturing be performed, how better, and how cheaper? The first highlights a higher rate of production, the second implies the use of innovation in manufacturing and the third aims at reducing the cost,” remarked Prof. Pal, the lead of Centre of Excellence in Advanced Manufacturing Technology.

While India has been making fast inroads in the domain of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, it is the capital intensive and service industries which are able to put the applications to their vantage. The MSME sector, which employs more than 100 million people in the country contributing close to 30% of India’s GDP and 50% of export revenue, is still outside the ambit of industry-scale adoption of AI & ML.

“This is the gap which IIT Kharagpur aims to bridge while making low-cost Industry 4.0 solutions across all industrial sectors and accelerate the pace towards Atma Nirbhar Bharat,” he added.

Media Coverage:

Economic Times	Hindustan Times	Business Standard
ABP Education	DataQuest	Analytics India Magazine
NDTV	The Week	Outlook
CNBC TV18	Danik Jagran

Contact:

Project: Prof. Surjya K Pal, skpal@mech.iitkgp.ac.in;

Media: Shreyoshi Ghosh, shreyoshi@adm.iitkgp.ac.in

Follow IIT Kharagpur on social media: Facebook: @IITKgp Twitter: @IITKgp Instagram: @iit.kgp

Stepping up Industry 4.0 Manufacturing

Novel Industry 4.0 Technology Jointly Developed by IIT Kharagpur and TCS to Set New Trends in India’s Advanced Manufacturing Sector

In an industrial collaboration with Tata Consultancy Services, IIT Kharagpur has developed novel Industry 4.0 technology for remotely controlled factory operations and real-time quality correction during industrial production.

At this time of pandemic when staffing has restrictions due to hygiene and social distancing norms, cloud infrastructure, remote and real-time operations systems hold the key to maintain effective industrial operations. 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. This will make it possible for industrial houses to achieve standardized quality goals throughout the production process and reduce rejection hence lowering the cost of production.

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.

“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. Pal.

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 concept of this technology can further be evolved for real-time control of other industrial processes and such work will be carried at the Centre with other industrial partners soon, Prof. Pal confirmed. The data from multiple sensors further improves the accuracy of the industrial production process, he affirmed. The technology has been jointly patented by IIT Kharagpur and TCS. The innovation has also been reported in the CIRP Journal of Manufacturing Science and Technology [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cirpj.2020.03.004]. This project was funded by the Department of Heavy Industry, Govt. of India and TCS.

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.

“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,” said K Ananth Krishnan, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer.

“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,” he added.

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.

Talking about Centre of Excellence, Director, IIT Kharagpur, Prof. V K Tewari said, “This is the way forward, not only in the new normal situation due to the pandemic but with the increasing adoption of automation, digitization, IoT and Cyber-physical Systems applications in the industrial sector as part of Industry 4.0. Our Centre of Excellence in Advanced Manufacturing Technology with its industry collaborations has immense scope in facilitating this transition not only through innovations but also upskilling the workforce for using such technologies and innovative processes. You will witness the germination of a new industrial culture from centres such as ours towards Atmanirbhar Bharat.”

Cite Paper: Mishra D., Pal S.K., et al. Real time monitoring and control of friction stir welding process using multiple sensors, CIRP Journal of Manufacturing Science and Technology, Volume 30, August 2020, Pages 1-11, doi.org/10.1016/j.cirpj.2020.03.004

Project Contact: Prof. Surjya K Pal, E: skpal@mech.iitkgp.ac.in

Media Contact: Shreyoshi Ghosh, E: shreyoshi@adm.iitkgp.ac.in

Follow IIT Kharagpur on Social Media: Facebook: @IIT.Kgp; Twitter: @IITKgp; Instagram: @iit.kgp

Advancing Industrial Workforce

IIT Kharagpur’s Advanced Manufacturing Technology Centre Creating Nexgen Workforce for India’s Manufacturing Industry

The Centre of Excellence in Advanced Manufacturing Technology at IIT Kharagpur organized a five-day training programme on Computer Numerical Control (CNC) for industry professionals and technicians. The Centre, which was set up with support from the Department of Heavy Industry (Ministry of HI&PE), Govt. of India and a consortium of six industrial houses and a startup, has a mandate of creating awareness regarding advanced technologies, reskilling and upskilling of the Indian MSMEs and youth. CNC, being the core of any manufacturing equipment, is an essential pack of knowledge, one must have.

The training program targeted a diverse group of participants including students undergoing diploma courses and from ITI colleges, laboratory technicians, graduate degree students, teachers, and industry personnel. The training programme equipped the participants with knowledge of programming and detailed machine operations essential for CNC jobs in the manufacturing industry.

A unique trend was the presence of female participants which is indicative of opportunities of women’s employment on the machining shop floor as programmers and operators.

“In today’s era of Industry 4.0, the manufacturing platform is being transformed and integrated with digitization. But if you look at the connection between our capital goods sector and the MSMEs this transition is not without disruptions. Our Centre of Excellence will help the industries including MSMEs to upskill their work-force through training on the automation concepts like CNC, Robotics, etc.” remarked Prof. Surjya K Pal, Professor in-Charge of the Centre.

The teachers and students participating in the training programme expressed practicality of such training on a shopfloor-like platform with industry scale CNC machines. Witnessing the overwhelming response, the Centre is now geared up to offer a similar training programme in the next 2-3 months.

Various large, medium and small enterprises have shown interest to join the consortium of this CoE. Four Tata companies are associated with this consortium where our faculty colleagues are closely working with them on Industry 4.0, automation and Additive Manufacturing areas. The Centre has created an Innovation Lab where anybody can access the state of the art facility by paying nominal charges.

“We are also planning to float training opportunities on Machine Centre by using the state-of-the-art 5-axis Machining Centre, Industrial Robotics, and Robotic Welding by using the upcoming state-of-the-art robotic welding facility at this Centre of Excellence,” Pal added.

This Centre of Excellence in Advanced Manufacturing Technology also offers a unique platform for collaborative research in manufacturing keeping harmony with the ‘Make-in-India’ initiative of the Govt. of India. The Centre initiates innovative and top-quality research focused towards the industries on Specialty materials, Design and automation, Additive manufacturing, and Industry 4.0 (Industrial Internet of Things). The Centre boosts innovative interventions in the advanced manufacturing domain by enabling an ecosystem among Institutes of higher repute, top industries, and also the MSMEs & start-ups. The Centre also energizes the MSMEs through training, short-term courses on the adoption of modern concepts in manufacturing.

Mentoring Startup for Industry 4.0

Business Standard Republic UNI India Today Hindustan Times India Blooms DataQuest Headlines Today

The Center of Excellence in Advanced Manufacturing Technology at IIT Kharagpur is roping in MSMEs for collaborative R&D projects and consultancy to develop resources for Industry 4.0. In a recent initiative, the Centre, which is funded by the Department of Heavy Industry of Ministry of Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises, Government of India, has signed an MoU with a Kolkata-based startup Hemraj Infocom to promote industrial consultancy and industrial research internship for students.

Hemraj Infocom will be the first affiliate member in the industry consortium of the Centre which is currently led by top industries as Tata Motor, Tata Consultancy Services, Tata Steel, Tata Sons, BHEL, and HEC.

Prof. Surjya K Pal who is heading Centre said, “We are looking forward to more such startups joining the consortium whom we will offer mentorship in the area of Industry 4.0 applications. With Hemraj we will be mentoring them in the manufacturing applications in which our Centre has got a strong foothold. They will also have access to the facilities at our Centre both to the experts and infrastructure. We will also provide them with free training on cutting-edge industrial applications, research solutions for their typical industrial challenges such as cloud computing, real-time data processing, analysis and storage, networking and automation, real-time process monitoring.”

Students from various backgrounds including electronics and electrical communication, or mechanical or electrical engineering etc. would be able to work on problem statements shared by the startup.

Hemraj Infocom is working in combined areas of IoT, AIML, Robotics, Automation and which will prove to be revolutionary with a new industrial boom in India in the near future.

Soham Dasgupta, CEO of Hemraj Infocom confirmed the submission of projects for mentorship in voice-enabled survey devices, predictive maintenance for motors. He is hopeful such research internships will further boost MSME culture in the region. “We are also looking for upgrading the research skills of our human resources,” said Dasgupta.

Abhishek Saha, Head, Business Development of Hemraj Infocom said, “we are enthusiastic about seeking guidance on mission-critical projects from an academic institution of repute like IIT Kharagpur which will enable us to deliver proof of concept and projects thereby by implementing niche areas of R&D in our business operations.”

The Centre has been conducting several industry-aligned workshops, short-term courses, talks by industry experts for MSMEs and capital goods sector in areas such as computer numerical controls, composite manufacturing, metallography. The programmes are also open to students from other educational institutions. For affiliate members, such training workshops will be conducted free of cost and also a huge pool of student researchers in diverse areas of Industry 4.0 would be made available to work on problem statements.

Prof. Pal has been approaching FOSME, CII, EEPC to reach out to startups and MSMEs and connect them to the Centre’s consortium.

“It will diversify the Centre’s research goals through a different set of application-oriented industrial challenges with more tight timeline and product delivery schedule as against giant corporations which focus on broader R&D,” he remarked. More such MSMEs are in touch with the Centre for affiliated memberships, he confirmed.

The Centre aims to stimulate innovation to manufacture smart machines in the capital goods sector. This centre offers a unique platform for innovative and top-quality research focused on the industries on Specialty materials, Design and automation, Additive manufacturing, and Digital Manufacturing and Industrial Internet of Things. The centre will boost innovative interventions and collaborative research in the advanced manufacturing domain by enabling an ecosystem among Institutes of higher repute, heavy industries, and also the MSMEs and start-ups.

Mission possible

Prof. Surjya K. Pal, Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Professor-in-Charge, DHI Centre of Excellence in Adv Manuf Tech (http://www.coeamt.com ), Associate Dean, Alumni Affairs, Chairman, Steel Technology Centre, Executive Adviser, Science and Technology Entrepreneurs’ Park (STEP), added another feather to his cap recently. He has been appointed Lord Kumar Bhattacharyya Chair Professor of Manufacturing in the Department of Mechanical Engineering of IIT Kharagpur for 2019-22.

The Chair was set up in April 2019 by Prof. Tapan Bagchi (DSc/2012/IM), alumnus of the Institute, former Director, NITIE, Mumbai, and former Dean of SP Jain Mumbai and Dubai. The Chair was instituted in the memory of Distinguished Alumnus Lord Sushanta Kumar Bhattacharyya – Founder Chairman of the Warwick Manufacturing Group and a renowned academic, successful entrepreneur, manufacturing expert and leading consultant to industry and governments – who passed away on March 1, 2019. The Chair will promote excellence in manufacturing and partnership with industry while making maximum use of the technological capabilities of IIT Kharagpur.

Prof. Pal spoke to KGP Chronicle about the honour, his personal memories of Lord Bhattacharyya, working with WMG and his own dreams about the DHI Centre of Excellence in Advanced Manufacturing Technology, which he heads.

What are your feelings on being appointed the Lord Bhattacharyya Chair Professor of Manufacturing?

I’m really honoured because this award means a lot to me. Lord Bhattacharyya was a pioneer in bringing academic research to the industries in order to create an impact in the industrial world. We have set up the DHI Centre of Excellence for Advanced Manufacturing with the same motto and we are trying to follow the model of WMG. Receiving the award in the name of Lord Bhattacharyya is thus a real honour to me.

What do you think is Lord Bhattacharyya’s legacy?

Conventionally, the academic world and the industry run parallel to each other, and the worlds do not converge. The WMG is where the academia and industry work together to bring success. It was Lord Bhattacharyya who pioneered this concept and steered it to phenomenal success through WMG, his brainchild. At the DHI CoE, we are following his footsteps.

You were talking about how momentous your visit to the WMG had been. Could you please eludicate?

I had heard a lot about WMG during my time in Sheffield as a post-doctoral scholar. Here at IIT Kharagpur, I had been constantly encouraged by our former Director, Prof. Partha Pratim Chakrabarti, to visit WMG to see for myself its unique operations. At WMG, they do their research for the industry. The industry identifies the problem and the faculty members work together with the industry professionals to find a solution.

Visiting WMG enriched me and completely changed my perspective. In November 2018, I got an opportunity to meet Lord Bhattacharyya himself, and it turned out to be an overwhelming experience. I told him about my plans about the Centre of Excellence in Advanced Manufacturing that will be a gamechanger in the manufacturing sector following the footsteps of WMG. I still remember him saying that WMG would give its wholehearted support to IIT KGP, which is his alma mater and which recognizes him as a Distinguished Alumnus. He told me, “Whatever support you want, WMG will be there for IIT KGP.”

WMG is one of the international partners of the DHI Centre. What kind of support are they providing to the Centre?

WMG is officially the international research advisor of the Centre. We had discussions with Prof. Dave Mullins of WMG. He came to visit my lab along with Prof. Sujit Banerji and Prof. Barbara Shollock, both then with WMG, and took a lot of interest in my work. They proposed if we could jointly organize training program for industries. The DHI Centre is about to run programs customised for different industries, particularly for MSMEs. We are trying to see how WMG can help us evolve our curriculum for these training programs. Besides, WMG faculty are the co-supervisors of several doctoral scholars at IIT Kharagpur.

Could you please talk about industry participation in the activities of the DHI Centre?

The Centre is an interdisciplinary industrial research centre which works through a consortium of companies. Four of them are private companies–like Tata Sons, Tata Motors, Tata Consultancy and Tata Steel – and two are public sector companies, such as BHEL and HEC Ranchi. Industry and faculty members are working together to solve problems of the respective industries. Side by side, we are floating several short term courses and organizing workshops. Take the recent Composite 4.0 workshop, where faculty members of world universities gave lectures through Skype. There were also lectures by industry leaders from Airbus and Tata AutoComp.

Consortium members are giving us greater connectivity with the industry. As part of our MoU with the companies, industries can also participate in lectures and attend courses for free. Take the forthcoming workshop on September 20. Falling into the research paradigm of our DHI, I have also lectured in Merchants’ Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Engineering Export Promotion Council of India (EEPC) and other fora. Together, we are also devising affordable training courses for MSMEs.

Which is the most sought after research area pursued by the DHI Centre?

We work in four verticals – materials, automation, additive manufacturing and Industry 4.0. The last, also known as the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is most well-recognized and sought after. It is said that IIoT and data analytics will serve a critical role in enabling the vision of smart machines and intelligent cooperation between multiple machines promoting sustainable operations. One of the components of this is additive manufacturing because it is a new route of manufacturing. These two areas are becoming most prominent. We have two projects in Industry 4.0 and two in additive manufacturing, where we have strong faculty strength. We are also exploring the field of specialty materials. Several companies, such as Airbus has shown a lot of interest in this sector. The crux of the matter is to give higher productivity at lower cost while ensuring quality. That is what advanced manufacturing is all about.

What is the role of such alumni funded chair professorships in encouraging the culture of research?

An alumni-endowed Chair tries to create an impact in any particular research area. For eg, when Vinod Gupta recently endowed the A.S. Davis Chair in Thermodynamics, he vividly recalled Prof. Davis’s way of working and his vision. The purpose of creating the A.S. Davis Chair was to further this vision. Similarly, when Prof. Tapan Bagchi instituted the Lord Bhattacharyya Chair of Manufacturing, he wanted to promote a specific vision which he thought would benefit the Institute from where Lord Bhattacharyya had graduated. So This Chair brings me a lot of honour as also the responsibility of working more intently with industry. My being the Associate Dean, Alumni Affairs, helps me forge a connection with the alumni as well. If they come forward and work with DHI Centre, it will flourish, which is the vision and wish of Prof. Bagchi. The DHI Centre is very close to my heart. I passionately look forward to its success.

The DHI Centre of Excellence (CoE) in Advanced Manufacturing Technology at IIT Kharagpur was set up by the Department of Heavy Industries under the Ministry of Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises, Govt. of India, in November 2017 to strengthen the country’s capital goods sector through a constant upgradation of manufacturing technology and technology transfer to industry, particularly to MSMEs. This Centre aims at proliferating innovative research focused on industries on Specialty materials, Design and automation, Additive manufacturing, and Digital manufacturing & Industrial IoT. The centre encourages the young minds and doctoral scholars for a full-fledged involvement in its endeavours with fellowship opportunities.