Setting a new trend in India’s manufacturing sector, a technological breakthrough has been made by IIT Kharagpur in partnership with Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). IIT Kharagpur CoE working with TCS Research and Innovation team has developed an Industry 4.0 technology for remotely controlled factory operations and real-time quality correction during industrial production. 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 innovation proposes to upgrade the industrial process of friction stir welding to a multi-sensory system of Industry 4.0. It will not only set the course for remotely controlled operations in the Indian industrial sector but also enable real-time quality check and correction during the production process.
The industrial houses will now be able to achieve standardized quality goals throughout the production process and reduce rejection hence lowering the cost of production.
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 operation. 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 fabricated.
Calling it a step towards addressing the challenges posed by the pandemic, K Ananth Krishnan, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, TC said, “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. 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 Co Innovation Network (TCS CoIN) in creating real world solutions with scientific rigour.” (Source: PIB Delhi, EET India)
