“Digitalization can save billions of dollars per year for the aluminium industry if adopted at its maximum efficiency,” Avijit Deb, Vice President & Chief Digital Officer, Aluminium & Power, Vedanta Limited
While the advent of Industry 4.0 is creating a buzz across the metal industry and the implementation of digitalization and automation is making the industrialists intrigued about its long-run effect, we have Mr. Avijit Deb with us sharing his views and knowledge on how the Industry 4.0 is revolutionizing the aluminium industry.
Avijit Deb is the Vice President and Chief Digital Officer, Aluminium & Power, Vedanta Limited, with over 20 years of experience in Industry solutions, Transformations, P&L Ownership. He thinks the adoption of Industry 4.0 is proving to be the game-changer in the aluminium industry and Vedanta’s Aluminium Business has already occupied the front-runner status in this technological space.
Let us here find out what else he thinks about the implication of Industry 4.0 for the aluminium industry, how it can benefit the industry, and role does it play in aluminium smelting.
AlCircle: What is the implication of Industry 4.0 for the aluminium industry? How can the implementation of its framework benefit the industry?
Avijit Deb: The metal industry plans to invest substantially in digital operation solution over the next five years across the globe. This investment is translating into increasingly advanced level of digitalization and integration, resulting in substantial operational cost savings, safety & security enhancement of workplace, and the sustainability of business and social inclusiveness.
Industry 4.0 allows manufacturing to gather and analyse data from across a wider range of activities and from partners, suppliers, collaborators, end users and end customers in ways that enable faster, more flexible processes to produce higher-quality output, sometimes highly customized at reduced costs. Heightened connectivity and automation give companies the opportunity to add value to products and to develop new kinds of offerings to address their markets, which is the need of the hour for aluminium sector in India to sustain and re-invent themselves.
The framework which includes cyber-physical systems (OT-IT), industrial internet of things (IIOT), cloud computing, cognitive computing, and artificial intelligence has moved from being a ‘nice to have’ or augmenting capability for aluminium Industry to something that is now vitally important for differentiation and becoming a disruptive force. It is delivering supply chain agility, deeper process understanding, and higher production utilization.
The digitalization, integration and automation opportunities enable companies to collaborate both internally and across their value chains in ways that can provide a step-change in productivity as well as design and quality. And these are the opportunities that are increasingly important as companies seek to stay relevant as the era of digitally-connected smart infrastructure develops.
AlCircle: What are the possible hurdles in the implementation of Industry 4.0 in the aluminium sector?
Avijit Deb: Any fully integrated aluminium company has diverse data sources, types & integration i.e., mining operations, multimodal supply chain, diverse plant process data, etc., which are legacy in nature and require greater time and effort to standardize for utilizing in analytics. There is an urgent need of a quantum shift in the architecting Legacy OT & IT designs to achieve a more agile, connected and complete architecture with data security. Another crucial aspect would be longer cycle time for business realization – the concept to business realization typically takes 18–24 months lead time. In this, case process alignment, change management & receptibility of cultural changes for faster adoption of digitalization by default assume higher importance.
AlCircle: How has digitalization changed the way a step-change plant operates? How do digital technologies improve efficiency, productivity, and safety in a smelter?
Avijit Deb: On the Health, Safety & Environment front, there’s a lot that digital and IT can do. For example, companies use technology-based tracking and monitoring system. It checks the health status of pots, furnaces, and boilers. And in case of any unsafe condition, the system immediately flags it and alerts the concerned authority for immediate safety action. Additionally, in monitoring processes, equipment and machines, it ensures compliances to the environmental laws and regulations which are equally essential for a smooth carrying out of the business.
Similarly, on the operations and maintenance side, digital can play an important role as it can continue to monitor the equi.pment health status and evaluate whether they are running at the designated design efficiency or not. It enables the decision-makers to take timely corrective actions, in case of any deviation without affecting the production cycle, in any way. The advent of digitalization in logistics has delivered the desired efficiency by optimizing movement and reducing fuel & manpower cost.
Thus, we can say that Digitalization can save billions of dollars per year for the aluminium industry if adopted at its maximum efficiency
AlCircle: What is the role of automation in aluminium smelting? How does it improve safety and efficiency while managing cost and time?
Avijit Deb: Process Automation is a legacy in aluminium smelting process. With the advent of Industry 4.0 framework, companies can directly benefit from advanced analytics, AI for predictive and advisory maintenance to avoid downtimes, optimize inventory carrying costs, manpower overhead reductions and enhanced safety.
With the advent of image & video analytics, contextual analytics, situational awareness- safety and security risk analysis has become more intelligent and informative for taking real-time decisions and avert any hazards/calamities with lesser human resources and lower overhead costs.
AlCircle: Vedanta being the largest aluminium producer in India is at the forefront of the digital transformation of the industry. Give us a heads up on Vedanta’s implementation of digitalization in its Jharsuguda operations?
Avijit Deb: Vedanta Ltd., Jharsuguda is embarking on a journey towards a 360-degree digital transformation covering – Operational Cost Reduction, Health Safety & Environment, Business Sustainability & Compliances, and CSR. We, here at Vedanta’s Aluminium Business, are collaborating with the best global technology providers, elite research institutes and tech start-ups to co-develop digital solutions like Logistics Control towers for commodity supply chain, critical asset predictive maintenance, plant efficiency improvement, digital healthcare solution, Power Plant operations optimisation, Video Analytics, etc., using cutting edge technologies like Digital Twins, Data Science, Robotics, Cobotics, IoT, Specialised Telecommunication technologies, Connected Assets, Deep Learning Techniques, etc.
We are also implementing few globally first solutions such as Digitalisation of Ash Ponds, in line with compliance and sustainability standards.
AlCircle: Going forward, how does Vedanta plan to implement the elements of Industry 4.0 into its operations?
Avijit Deb: Vedanta is also embarking on advanced analytics, IoT and digital platforms to provide customer delight, stakeholder management, and Social Transformation through digital technologies. The adoption of Industry 4.0 is proving to be the game-changer in the aluminium industry and Vedanta’s Aluminium Business has already occupied the front-runner status in this technological space. This head start has helped us in envisaging a more progressive and adaptable framework which would enable exponential growth prospects.
