A custom solution was also created to facilitate production reports, stage-wise losses and quality control
Piramal, a leading glass packaging company has deployed Microsoft’s Azure IoT platform to digitally transform its manufacturing operations. Counted among early adopters of the technology, Piramal Glass has currently implemented the Real-Time Manufacturing Insights (RTMI) solution, on 46 production lines. These assembly lines are located in India, Sri Lanka and the United States of America.
The RTMI solution has been deployed at plants with an overall capacity of 1375 tons per day, with 12 furnaces and 60 production lines, all of which run on a 24/7 basis.
Vijay Shah, Director, Piramal Glass and Executive Director, Piramal Enterprises Ltd, said, “As the world’s most preferred supplier of glass packaging solutions, Piramal Glass is committed to continuously adding value to its customers. We are happy to have collaborated with Microsoft on our journey towards digital transformation and business critical future readiness. Glass manufacturing is a complex process with many interactive variables. Combining digital technologies with precision high-quality glass manufacturing, has helped us fortify our accelerated growth path.”
Improved production efficiency
A post on Microsoft India blog claims that Piramal Glass leveraged IoT to get real-time visibility into its line manufacturing operations and to analyze production line losses at various stages. Using Azure IoT Hub, Microsoft helped Piramal Glass acquire data from sensors on production lines to identify quality parameters at each stage and get insights on line efficiencies in real-time. This resulted in improved production efficiency and cost reduction up to 70% as compared to a glass industry manufacturing execution system (MES).
The Azure IoT platform enabled Piramal Glass to connect and monitor their equipment to gain real-time visibility into operational data that was previously unavailable. The technology integration was designed for fast and easy set-up to rapidly showcase the results and build on its existing sensors, equipment, systems, and data.
Sashi Sreedharan, Managing Director, Microsoft India, said, “Microsoft is committed towards the technological advancement of the manufacturing sector in India. We are excited to partner with Piramal Glass as they create a strong foundation for driving transformational change. It is significant that Microsoft technology enabled plant operations to continue as usual during the rollout of the Azure IoT solution, ensuring no disruption to the core manufacturing and deep integration with critical business processes.”
Customised solutions
The transformation was facilitated by Precimetrix, which is also a Microsoft partner. It deployed a plant monitoring system hosted on Microsoft Azure. The data collected through sensors on high speed conveyor lines aggregated on an edge gateway and then was pushed to Precimetrix’s Plant Monitoring System on the cloud.
A custom solution was also created to facilitate production reports, stage-wise losses and quality control. The system sends automatically sends emails, push notifications and SMS in case of anomalies or whenever it senses a drop in production efficiency.
