Pro MFG Plant Maintenance & Asset Management Summit 2021 – presented by Loctite

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Team Pro MFG Media

Pro MFG Plant Maintenance & Asset Management Summit 2021 presented by Loctite; was a huge success with delegates offering their valuable information which won appreciation by one and all.

Pro MFG Plant Maintenance & Asset Management Summit 2021 presented by Loctite; was held on 26th May 2021. The grandeur of the event was in its precision of ideas and strategies that were put forth by industry experts. They spelled out the importance of maintenance operations, key innovations to pursue; excellence in strategic methodologies and many more. The delegates from major industries like: Steel, Cement, Mining and Metals, Energy & Power; catered to the knowledge-sharing of the summit.

The summit commenced with a special address by Mr. Manish Singhal, Business Director General Industry –India, Henkel Adhesives Technologies.

He said: “Almost 70% of breakdowns or unplanned shutdowns occur because of some common challenges, such as loosening of nuts and bolts due to vibration, leakages due to gasket failures etc. Loctite engineering adhesive inside cures to become thermoset plastic; the nut and the bolt then vibrate as one, there’s elimination of the gap because of this bonding, and the possibility of any loosening is completely ruled out. Different grades of strengths of Loctite adhesives are available as a simple solution to a chronic problem in the industry. So, we make foolproof failure free assemblies for maintenance experts by application of engineering adhesives. Also, we have developed ceramic coatings to be applied to impellers and inside of pump casing to prolong life, increase efficiency. Our R&D experts have thought about moving into the future and making our coatings and solutions digital - starting from helping reactive maintenance or rebuilding to providing solutions that they can apply in their assemblies making the maintenance more predictive and prescriptive. The next step is to integrate artificial intelligence into these coatings and then come up with self healing smart coatings and we are working to introduce sensors into the coatings.”

This was followed by two panel discussions and a FireSide Chat: Digitalization: Maintenance 4.0. The platform also had a live chat section that showcased live questions from audience to dignitaries to be discussed.

The first panel discussion topic was Journey through World Class Plant Performance; that revolved around subjects such as the best practices for better maintenance management, driving a maintenance culture change through strategic supplier partnerships; and others.

The panelists were:: Ms. Sandhya Pande, Director – Manufacturing Engg | Manufacturing Engineering Leader - India ABO, Cummins India; Mr. DS Ravindra Raju, President – Manufacturing, Deepak Fertilisers and Petrochemicals Corporation; Mr. SN Sastry, Unit Head – Chemical Business, Grasim Industries; Mr. Radhashyam Kedia, Vice President – Works, JK Tyre and Industries; and Mr.Sidharath Behl, Vice President – Manufacturing and Site Incharge, SRF –Packaging Film Business. This panel discussion was moderated by Mr. Ashok Muthuswamy, AVP and Plant Head, Tata Chemicals.

The key highlights of the discussion by the speakers are mentioned as follows:

Mr. Ashok Muthuswamy, “ I’m looking forward for useful information on- robust structure that can be reasonably organized by firms; and to understand how to put more systems and concepts in place for maintenance, leveraging on the modern developments and digital, and how do we operate in this current scenario with COVID.”

Mr. Radhashyam Kedia asserted: “We have chosen the predictive maintenance model and started real-time condition monitoring and potential fault detection, which has helped us tremendously. Also we have a centralized analytical platform to monitor energy and assets for multiple plants; along with automated MIS management information system reports like progressive losses of the plant, shift-wise productivity which helps improve plant efficiency and reduce power losses.”

Mr. SN Sastry emphasized on the importance of preventive maintenance and said: “Predictive maintenance and condition based monitoring, predicts the health of the equipment before it goes out because it can create a catastrophe. Also proactive maintenance can significantly and unbelievably reduce the cost of maintenance.”

Mr. Sidharath Behl said: “With condition-based monitoring, the sensors come into play for early detection of if something goes wrong. So, if you detect early there are high chances that you will spend less and mean time to repair will also be reduced.”

Mr. DS Ravindra Raju expressed his thoughts on modern technologies for digitalization: “We integrated and connected different DCS and existing sensors to create a central system for data and using analytics. We are also implementing online continuous vibration monitoring systems for critical equipment for predictive analysis. And we are considering the use of AI/ML in plant maintenance.”

Ms. Sandhya Pande said: “It’s vital to build our strategy throughout the lifecycle of the asset for data strategy. One needs to have the right hardware to collect the data and on the software side or on the cloud side, and deploy the right model, the right software where you can collect, analyze and give you the correct analysis of this particular data.”

FireSide Chat: Digitalization: Maintenance 4.0. was moderated by Mr. Pankaj Mittal, Founder and CEO, Digizen Consulting and presented insights from Mr. Vinit Thakur, President and Chief Digital Officer, LafargeHolcim India.

The key highlights of their discussion are mentioned as follows:-

Mr. Vinit Thakur said: “It is important to create a data ecosystem and have a data strategy. The data is the behaviour and characteristics of your assets. So with data- one can get into operational analytics, descriptive analytics, that can raise the alert and one can go back to ERP to raise maintenance orders. The other important component is predictive analytics. With pandemic and otherwise current market scenarios, a structured method of cultural change, and a structured method of management commitment, and a structured method of change in itself is the way forward.”

Mr. Pankaj Mittal added to it and said: “Data driven strategies are here to stay. But then this data driven strategy of data collecting from all these machines, and embedding it into IP layers is very important to get actionable insights.”

The second round of discussion included panelists: Mr. Nandan Mishra, Founder and CEO, Algo8 Inc, Canada; Mr. Suresh Chigurupalli, Director – Operations, Balasore Alloys Ltd; Mr. Shirish Yadav, Vice President – Manufacturing and Innovation, ITC Foods; Mr. NC Chakrabarti,VP & Head - Smart Manufacturing Reliance Industries; Mr. Shashi Mohan Singh, Head - Supply Chain and Manufacturing IT The Coca Cola Company. This session was moderated by Mr. Manish Kulkarni - Director Pro MFG Media.

The topic for this discussion was Building Plant Reliability & Predictability with Growing Throughput Demands & Tighter Maintenance Schedules. The delegates with their extensive knowledge of their engineering principles, experience and best practices provided useful ways to do more with less and get insights on plant management.

Mr. NC Chakrabarti said: “Data driven decision making involves collecting of data either from the legacy sensors, which are actually creating data or to the connected sensors or IoT, and apply analytics to develop insights; and based on those insights we can make decisions. Also it provides us with many alternatives to strengthen our course of further execution.”

Mr. Shirish Yadav shared some techniques for quality control, and shared: “The important techniques are ‘Five Why’ analysis and Pareto chart and fishbone diagram and another big area is the ‘Failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA)’ analysis which provides a systematic proactive method of evaluating the process to identify where and how it might fail and to access the relative impact of different failures in order to identify the parts and processes that are most importance in need for change.”

Mr. Shashi Mohan Singh said: “In very unprecedented times today, operating the plant is a big challenge. In order to resolve it the plan should be to opt for digitalization in the same direction. Also there is a need to align the objectives by preparing a good business case study along with the ROI.”

Mr. Nandan Mishra said: “It is the need of the hour to create information from data and generate the right knowledge from the data is the new game that has evolved with machine learning techniques. Also stochastic models and our numerical methods that we had around process calculations could be transformed with the machine learning kind of applications.”

Mr. Suresh Chigurupalli said about Performance Metrics: “For measuring, tracking and controlling the plant performance one should have the KPIs. The lagging KPIs are seeking results - MTTR, MTBF, downtime, cost per unit etc. Whereas leading KPIs are required to manage and maintain the processes. Identifying the right leading KPIs is critical and needs the most attention.”

The event concluded with a vote of thanks by Mrs. Amita Trivedi Bapari, Co-Founder and CEO at Pro MFG Media. Pro MFG Media has always focused on connecting and collaborating to put together insights which not only help in documenting knowledge but also helping out the industry tackle critical business issues.

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