Industrial and Systems Engineering

New Algorithm to Augment Industrial Profitability

IIT Kharagpur – Tata Metaliks Jointly Develop Industry 4.0 Algorithm to Change Profitability Scenario of India’s Manufacturing Sector

Researchers at the Centre of Excellence for Advanced Manufacturing Technologies, IIT Kharagpur have developed a predictive maintenance algorithm to improve the profitability of production jobs through substantial savings in Productivity, Downtime, Cost and Manpower. The data-driven predictive maintenance module has been successfully tested by Tata Metaliks for user-level acceptance.

The algorithm has been developed at the Centre of Excellence for Advanced Manufacturing Technologies, by a team led by Prof Akhilesh Kumar, Associate Professor, Dept. of Industrial Systems Engineering. Deployed on a gearbox of Annealing Furnace, the algorithm was tested for its ability to cluster various operating modes of the gearbox and outliers, adaptability to recognize new operating modes and predict impending failures, threshold flags for anomaly detection as well as tracking health state of the industrial assets.

Prof. Kumar said, “My goal was to develop generic diagnostic and prognostic algorithms that are rapidly configurable, and adaptive to facilitate effective and efficient large-scale deployment of Predictive Maintenance 4.0 (PdM4.0) technology for a wide variety of equipment/assets”.

Tata Metaliks has projected that the algorithm would have the potential for great savings from a predictive maintenance perspective. Based on various performance measures, an indirect increase in productivity was estimated to be ₹1 crore annually along with a direct decrease in (i) annual downtime by 40-hours, (ii) annual manpower requirement by 400 hours and (iii) cost by ₹8 Lakh. Tata Metaliks has developed a graphic user interface to display and retrieve the algorithmic data computation.

Dr. Purnendu Sinha, Technology leader-IoT & Analytics, Group Technology & Innovation Office, Tata Group, one of the collaborators on this project, strongly believes that such an initiative will enable the widespread acceptance of Industry 4.0 as a data-driven paradigm.

Mr. Mohit Kale, General Manager (Engineering Services), Tata Metaliks said “In the era of the fourth industrial revolution, it is undeniable that the industrial community is looking for better Proof-of-Concept to embrace IoT based applications, and this project builds such confidence”.

Tata Sons along with IIT Kharagpur hold the licensing rights for this algorithm.

“As India is determined to achieve the goal of Aatma Nirbhar Bharat, we must bridge the gap from lab to land by means of translational research. Academic research which can be directly tested by industries will not only improve the commercialization prospect but it will transform our centres of excellence as hotbeds of industrial innovations. This is the vision with which the Centre of Excellence for Advanced Manufacturing Technologies was set up by the Dept. of Heavy Industries, Govt. of India and a consortium of six industries and I am glad it is living upto the expectations,” opined Prof. Virendra K Tewari, Director, IIT Kharagpur.

Prof. Surjya K Pal who is heading the Centre called the development a great success of the industry-academia collaborative platform.

“This is another significant milestone in our goal to deliver Industrial IoT innovations to India’s manufacturing sector thus graduating it to Industry 4.0. The industrial collaborations make it possible to progress through the technology readiness levels and design systems which can be adopted by the industries,” he said.

About Center of Excellence in Advanced Manufacturing Technology, IIT Kharagpur

The Centre of Excellence in Advanced Manufacturing Technology was set up at IIT Kharagpur under the patronage of the Department of Heavy Industry of Ministry of Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises, Government of India and a consortium of six industry members. 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.

Contact:

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

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

Media Coverage:

India Today

DataQuest

India Blooms

Lessons from Day 3

Beating all conventional logic, which would expect the number of placements to go down steadily with each passing day, the figures at IIT Kharagpur show a consistently upward trend. From 170 placements offered on Day 1, the figure went up to 250 on Day 2. A total of 162 were placed on Day 3, with the top recruiters of the day being Honeywell, Axis Bank, ANI Technologies (OLA) with 34, 12 and 10 offers respectively.

Perhaps the faces said it all. Although still clad in their crisp white shirt and dark trousers and coat, many of those assembling in Nalanda bore little or no mark of the tension that had surfaced on faces on Day 1. Some of them who had been placed were still gambolling around Nalanda, if only to pep up their friends.

Amul Patwa from the Mathematics Department had got his placement in AppDynamics – an application performance management and IT operations analytics company based in San Francisco – on Day 1 itself but was still hanging around in Nalanda to cheer up his friends. So was Soumoshree Saha from the Industrial and Systems Engineering Department, who had got placed in Flipkart on Day 2.

“All things seemed to be going wrong on the first day for me, but things went smoothly on Day 2 and I got my placement by forenoon itself,” said Soumoshree.

Software was still dominating the offers, said an official from the Career Development Centre of IIT Kharagpur, but offers were robust from the core, analytics and financial and consulting sectors as well. In fact, there have been a substantial number of placements in the banking industry. The number of offers from public sector units had also gone up by three-fourths.

The biggest surprise of this year’s placements has been the number of offers from international firms, with the Japanese companies dominating the show with as many as 24 offers so far.

“What is undoubted is the preference for coding skills. In today’s world, the mantra is coding, so if students are well-equipped in coding, they have an obvious advantage,” said Prof. G.P. Raja Sekhar, Chairman, Career Development Centre, IIT Kharagpur and Chairman, All India Placement Committee.

The fact that stood out as the most obvious conclusion during the placement rounds at Nalanda was that irrespective of the department one belonged to, anyone with a good CGPA had a good chance of securing a placement. This is a fact that IIT Kharagpur has always tried to impress upon JEE qualified students during counselling, when the choice of department becomes an enormous dilemma for both students and their families.

The other fact was the skills that students need to pick up before they face placement. Take the case of Ashutosh Bhaskar from the Geology and Geophysics Department. Ashutosh has got his placement at Tiger Analytics, an advanced analytics and AI consulting company. “I not only cleared several certification courses in analytics, but also sought out internships in places where I could use and improve my analytics skills,” said Ashutosh. “Yes, the booming thing today is data analytics,” concurred Soumoshree. So did Manpreet Gulia from Chemical Engineering, who had secured her placement with Barclays.

Sometimes the curriculum itself at IIT Kharagpur prepares the student for the required skills. Soumoshree said, “My curriculum at the Industrial and System Engineering was diverse and I picked up the necessary skills in data and optimization analytics as also in supply chain management.” The student can also opt to pick up these skills through the curriculum. Take Krutarth Satoskar, who while doing his graduation in Biotechnology and Biochemical Engineering also did his minor in Financial Engineering. Not surprisingly, Krutarth has secured his placement in JP Morgan.

Together with the technical skills, the soft skills are as important. Parimal Pratyush of the Industrial and Systems Engineering reminded his interviewer of their significance while hurrying for his session on Day 2 of the placement. He recalled that both the Students’ Welfare Group, a student body operating under the Dean, Student Affairs, and Communiqué, the ‘Official Soft Skills Society’ of IIT Kharagpur have run exclusive sessions to groom students for the placement season. Communiqué, which started in 2006, with the aim to provide students a strong platform to improve their soft skills and personality, conducted a bootcamp and language improvement workshops this year. The society also launched ‘Finshots’ or newsletters they sent out to students in association with ‘Finception’, an IIM-A alumni Startup, to cover important financial and business news.

(After three days of placement, a total of 877 students have been placed including PPOs)

Photography: Suman Sutradhar

And the 1st Prize goes to . . .

Times of India India Today Careers360 Jagran Josh

A two-member student team from IIT KGP has adjudged winner of the APICS Supply Chain Case Competition for South and Western Asia.

The American Production and Inventory Control Society known as APICS is the world’s leading professional body for end-to-end supply chain excellence. The Case Competition has two segments in Asia, the Singapore edition for East Asian and South East Asian countries and the Hyderabad edition for West Asian and South Asian countries.

The winning team comprising Rohan Sewani and Rohit Sar from IIT Kharagpur was given a case for a toy manufacturing company which has recently shifted to manufacturing electronic toys and had its market spread out globally.

The case defined the specifics of the production amounts and capacities of each process of the manufacturing unit and also the layout of the factory, inventory distribution, inventory cycles, warehouse costs, operational expenditures, transportation etc. It was mentioned that the client was not performing very well in terms of demand fulfilment for the last two years and was not willing to invest any extra amounts for covering up the same.

The proposed solution from the IIT KGP team involved Material Flow Optimization, Inventory Optimization, Overall Equipment Effectiveness, and Material Yield.

We had given both, analytical and qualitative solutions based on layout restructuring, Work in Progress inventory cycle revision and elimination of external warehouses, decreasing the manpower and increasing
Overall Equipment Effectiveness and yield. We showed major savings and recommended the use of the Internet of Things and Artificial Intelligence based Predictive & Preventive Maintainance based solutions to increase the Overall Equipment Effectiveness.

Rohan Sewani, team member from the Dept. of Industrial and Systems Engineering, IIT Kharagpur.

Finally, the case had to be presented as a business case to the board of directors’ and the complete solution was to be presented as a complete package of analytical solutions and savings, future recommendations and client psychology-based marketing.

The Regional Finals for West and South Asia had overall eight teams from India with management students from IIMs, IIT Delhi, IIT Bombay, NMIMS and Delhi University. The team from IIT Kharagpur was the only Indian team represented by undergraduate engineering students.

The case was on a manufacturing facility layout restructuring problem. For undergraduate engineering students to achieve this feat in the Asian Regional Finals of APICS is significant in domains of operations management.

Prof. Manoj Kumar Tiwari, Faculty, Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering and Dean, Planning and Coordination, IIT Kharagpur.

The Industrial and Systems Engineering Department gets a slew of new facilities and laboratories

New facilities and laboratories at the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering will promote teaching, research and industry collaboration

Professor Partha Pratim Chakrabarti, Director, IIT Kharagpur inaugurated a number of teaching and research laboratories and other infrastructure facilities on October 27, 2018 in the Industrial and Systems Engineering Department of IIT Kharagpur. These include the Virtual Reality and Safety Analytics Laboratory, the Operations Research & Data Science Laboratory, the e-Business Laboratory, the Conference-cum-Video Conference Room and the new room of the Head of the Department. Prof. Jhareswar Maiti, Head of the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, says, “These laboratories will give a fillip to teaching, research and industry collaboration for the department, especially, in pursuit of Industry 4.0”.

The Virtual Reality (VR) Laboratory is dedicated to the purpose of accident modelling, simulation and analysis for improved hazard identification, safety training & education, safety inspection and instruction, and will ultimately help in a big way hazardous industries like iron & steel, oil & gas, coal and power, etc. in implementing the upcoming concept of ‘prevention through design (PtD). IIT Kharagpur has already started providing consultancy to industries such as integrated steel industry on VR based hazard identification, training and PtD for their ongoing operations and upcoming expansion.

Accidents are a cause of serious concern for industries the world over and companies run several safety programmes to prevent accident and injuries at work. The present methods have reached their limit of effectiveness and there is a need for new methods, technology and interventions. Since accidents cannot be created on the shop floor, experiments need to be conducted virtually. At the VR Laboratory, accident scenarios are generated and modelled on the computer, and all hazards and accident paths are identified. Users experience various hazardous scenarios as seen on a realistic plane through the use of sensors. The laboratory also deals with other subjects, such as work system design, ergonomics, and product development.

The newly-opened Safety Analytics Laboratory is part of the VR Laboratory. It seeks to analyse both structured and unstructured data, including texts and videos, which come up through industry’s Occupational Health & Safety management Systems (OHSMS), and to identify and predict incident patterns in order to introduce necessary interventions. The Safety Analytics Laboratory will also help industries to collect rich data using lagging and leading safety performance indicators.

Prof. Maiti says, “The department is executing a UAY (Ucchatar Avishkar Yojana) project titled ‘Safety Analytics: Save People at Work from Accidents and Injuries’. One major part of this project is how virtual reality can be used to train people to recognize and avoid hazards, and then, prevent hazard at the design stage. For training purpose, operators require sensors like head mounted display (HMD), data gloves, head tracker, hand tracker, eye tracker, etc. We have these here. We have developed an electric overhead travelling (EOT) crane simulator and employees from Tata Steel are coming in batches to be trained and to learn.”

Another unique equipment of the VR Laboratory is the 3D laser scanner, which is a powerful high speed three dimensional (3D) scanner delivering realistic and true-to-details scans in 3D point cloud format. Its software creates 3D models of facilities that ultimately helps in creating 3D virtual environment (VE). The laser scanner has a wide variety of applications. Other common applications include Industrial design, orthotics and prosthetics, reverse engineering and rapid prototyping, and documentation of cultural artefacts.

The Industrial and Systems Engineering Department already has a Product Development laboratory with a 3D printer. The Product Development students can not only test their ideas and create virtual prototypes, they can also use the 3D printer to create real products. Prof. Maiti says, “We are thankful to the IIT Kharagpur Director, Prof. Partha Pratim Chakrabarti. It was his initiative and encouragement that helped us develop the laboratories.”

The other important addition to the Department is the Operations Research and Data Science laboratory. The laboratory is a 70 seater facility, both well-equipped and well decorated. “We not only provide students requisite hardware and software, but also make them comfortable,” says Prof. Maiti.

He adds, “The Industrial and Systems Engineering Department is uniquely endowed to pursue data analytics. It has in its curriculum subjects related to programming, statistics and mathematical modeling. We focus on multidisciplinary investigation, models and methods of data, and computing with data. At the same time, it has great industry connect that helps in grooming students in functional application areas”. Prof. Maiti says, “We want our students to be groomed in all kinds of available commercial as well as open source software.” The Department has SAS, CPLEX, simulation, and other software.

The grand opening ceremony at the Industrial and Systems Engineering Department also saw the opening of the refurbished e-Business Centre. It will deal with all e-business, IT based development, online transaction related work, algorithm development, requirement analysis, and B2B, B2C and other transactions, including RFID and IoT related interfaces. The Department also inaugurated a Video Conference room where meetings, video conferences with people and organizations across the globe can happen, and a new room for the Head of Department.

Prof. Maiti has a lot of plans for the future. He says, “We will look more into the application side of data analytics, virtual reality, IoT and AI. One of the issues we want to focus on is safety in human-robot interface. We are already working on UAY (safety analytics), IMPRINT (Improved design of Shells for Field Guns), DHI (digital manufacturing & IIoT), food supply chain, and e-Business projects. We want to further enhance our research activities around these newly opened facilities catering to industry requirements. Thanks to the advice and guidance of Prof. Chakrabarti, we are looking forward to greater academic-industry collaboration from research, consulting and teaching point of view.”