- IIT Kharagpur, along with TCS, has developed a new automation technology that can remotely control factory operations and perform real-time quality correction.
Bengaluru: The IIT-Kharagpur has developed a new Industry 4.0 technology that can remotely control factory operations and perform real-time quality correction to take India’s manufacturing sector to more advanced levels.
The new innovative technology, developed by Surjya K Pal, professor in-charge at the Centre of Excellence in Advanced Manufacturing Technology, IIT–Kharagpur, in association with Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), has upgraded the industrial process of friction stir welding to a multi-sensory system capable of automation, quality check and quality control, all on a real-time basis, thereby meeting a key requirement for the fourth industrial revolution.
Explaining the choice of friction stir welding, he says: “We chose the welding process as it is at the heart of any industrial operations, be it in the aerospace or other key industries. If we could improve the weld quality in real-time during batch production it would enable us to reduce rejections in post-production sample checks.”
“The component criticality is much higher. Our multiple sensor process involves various signal processing and machine learning techniques to predict the ultimate tensile strength of the weld joint when fabricated,” he says.
Real-time control
The 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 standardised 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.
According to him, the development is significant.
“We have managed to demonstrate, using low-cost methods, how the industrial sector in India can use advanced technology to remotely control, assess, quality check and correct errors during the production process.
“We managed to develop this within the first three years of the five-year project. We are working on creating advanced digital twins, another key component of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. It will be ready within the next two years,” said Prof Pal, during a telephonic interview to TechChannel News.
India has an edge
A digital twin is a virtual replica of a product or service or even a person which when connected or paired with the physical enables simulation to understand, or even predict problems before they can occur.
“The rollout of 5G will facilitate the advancement required for Industry 4.0. The factories of the future will be fully connected and automated,” he says adding that India has a leading edge when it comes to creating production units capable of producing high-quality products at affordable costs.
“India is nowhere inferior to others. There has to be a more active collaboration between academia and the industry. Currently, not many come forward to spend on R&D or collaborate with academic institutions,” he says.
The Centre of Excellence in Advanced Manufacturing Technology was formed through the support of the Department of Heavy Industry of Ministry of Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises, Government of India, along with a consortium of six industry members such as Tata Motor, Tata Consultancy Services, Tata Steel, Tata Sons, BHEL, and HEC.
This project was funded by the Department of Heavy Industry, Govt. of India and TCS.
K Ananth Krishnan, Executive Vice-President and Chief Technology Officer, in a note, termed such innovation as an enabler of technology-based transformations in the country.
“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.