While the first two days were devoted to the electric power industry, the last two days focused on process and batch industries, such as chemical, oil, and gas; cement, metals and mining; and pharmaceutical and food & beverage. The forum also included a session on asset management and sustainable manufacturing. Almost 60 speakers comprised of industry thought leaders shared their thoughts and experiences through presentations, panel discussions, and personal interactions with C-level executives about manufacturing IT solutions that help companies emerge best in class. This insight covers the deliberations on July 14 and 15.
Thought leaders from technology solution companies and the manufacturing industries shared their perceptions on winning strategies and best practices that help companies achieve business transformation needed to pursue business excellence by successfully navigating the challenges of the New Normal. They focused on achieving business excellence through IT and automation solutions and deliberated upon the technology adoption roadmaps in their respective plants. This ARC forum also attracted delegates exploring business opportunities in India with plans to enter the India market.
Driving Innovation, Sustainability, and Performance of Electric Power, Process, and Batch Industries
The inaugural session on July 14, 2010 gave captains of India’s automation industry an opportunity to come together and deliberate on the roadmap for the electric power industry in India. These included Biplab Majumder, Vice Chairman & Managing Director, ABB India; V.V. Paranjape, Director and Member of Managing Board, Siemens & President Automation Industry Association of India; Vijay Srinivasan, Managing Director India Subcontinent, Invensys Operations Management; Dilip Sawhney, Regional Director, Rockwell Automation India; and Andy Chatha, President and CEO, ARC Advisory Group,
Mr. Chatha set the tone for the day’s sessions by deliberating about the impact of developments in the smart grid domain on the electric power industry. Globally, there is interest in building smart grids because it is the right thing to do; but each country is at a different stage of development. In the US, the existing grid already has many of the attributes of tomorrow’s smart grid and further extensions are taking place at a rapid pace. While China is already aggressively building its power infrastructure, in India this activity is still in the nascent stage. Business models are changing and the smart grid requires a regional recast for implementation. Keynote speeches by Mr. Majumder, Mr. Srinivasan, and Mr. Paranjape followed Andy Chatha’s presentation.
Biplab Majumder spoke about how the growth of the Indian economy is dependent on the growth of the country’s electric power and water industries. He laid out a roadmap for the electric power and water industries to deploy technology effectively to be able to meet the country’s requirements.
V.V. Paranjape presented his thoughts on the integrated automation approach that will help the industry improve manufacturing productivity, flexibility, and efficiency. Industry needs manufacturing IT solutions that effectively integrate all decision support systems along the supplier-customer axis, design-support axis, and plant-enterprise axis.
Vijay Srinivasan propounded the need for manufacturing companies to have “business control rooms” to empower them with real-time actionable information to be able to respond with agility to market demand and cost dynamics.
Roadmap for the Electric Power Industry
Following the keynote addresses, National Thermal Power Corporation team, the largest utility company in India, represented by N.K. Srivastava, M.K. Srivastava, and A.K. Sinha, gave an overview of India’s electric power industry and projected an investment of $1,300 billion over the next 25 years. This would take the country’s generating capacity to 800 GW from the existing 160 GW.
Rajabahadur Arcot, Vice President and General Manager of ARC India, spoke about the need for India’s electric power industry to leapfrog and build its growth strategy to include distributed generation and smart grid technologies. The morning session concluded with an interesting panel discussion on the roadmap for India’s electric power industry.
In the post-lunch session, Gururaj Bengeri, Siemens PLM Software, spoke about project lifecycle management for energy and utilities, and N. R. Kamath, ABB covered the topic of instrumentation, control, and electrical strategies for electric power utilities and captive power plants (CPP). In India, many manufacturing companies build and operate their own captive power plants to ensure the availability of electric power to meet in-house requirements. However, the electricity law also permits CPPs to trade in power and gives them necessary access to the grid. Biswanath Mahapatra, BHEL, joined by A.V.S. Rao, NTPC, presented on the performance analysis and optimization of thermal power plants in India. BHEL and NTPC collaboratively developed the performance, analysis, diagnostic, and optimization (PADO) software solution.
Legacy Automation Systems: Need for Technology Audit
In the evening session, Naveen Vashist, Rockwell Automation, spoke about the automation strategies for CPPs. While the optimum performance of the 21st century’s integrated power plant was the theme of Invensys Operations Management’s presentation by Shripad Lale; N. K. Srivastava, NTPC, spoke about the issues and challenges of aging automation systems and related migration issues, including the techno-economic viability. Rajabahadur Arcot highlighted the need for companies to carry out technology audits periodically to assess the impact of aging automation systems. Power plants are capital-intensive and it is necessary for companies to pay more attention to managing their physical and virtual assets throughout their lifecycle.
Smart Electricity and Smart Grid Imperatives for India
On the second day of the forum, the morning session focused on transmission, distribution, power generation from nonconventional sources, and smart grid solutions. The afternoon sessions included interesting presentations on asset management and sustainable manufacturing. Andy Chatha started the second day’s proceedings with a presentation that looked at the challenges faced by manufacturing companies and spoke about the information technology and automation solutions that can help them achieve performance breakthroughs.
Uday Kale, Reliance Energy, spoke on how the company successfully leverages technology to emerge as a leading integrated power utility company in India. The recent investments that Reliance Energy made in geographical information systems (GIS) and integrating these with the geospatial information from the SCADA systems helps the company ensure reliable electric power distribution operations and are aimed at making Reliance Energy smart grid-ready.
Sandeep Sinha, ABB, presented his thoughts on smart electricity, which encompasses augmenting the existing generating capacity in a sustainable and energy-efficient manner without compromising reliability. SUPCON’s Ji Yong spoke about converting garbage and waste into electric power with the help of incinerators and their control systems. Anjan Banerjee, ABB, discussed managing electrical systems successfully to reliably meet the demand for electric power without compromising on grid discipline. He described an integrated automation system, which ensures islanding, load shedding, and auto-synchronization.
Santhosh Nair, IBM, traced the evolution of Smart Grid Maturity Model (SGMM), developed by the collaborative efforts of IBM and a group of leading utilities. The stewardship of SGMM now rests with the Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute. Sriker Annangi, GE Energy looked at Smart Grid as the answer for meeting the increased demand for electric power globally. Smart grid helps in optimizing the transmission, distribution, and generation systems, and in efficiently integrating traditional and renewable energy sources. Sudeep Edakkattu, Honeywell, in his presentation looked at these evolving concepts from India’s perspective and laid out the smart grid vision for India.
Asset Lifecycle Management Imperatives
Andy Chatha set the tone for the session on enterprise asset management. He spoke about the rapid pace at which collaborative devices and technologies are emerging and the escalating challenges in integrating people, processes, information, and technologies. ARC’s asset lifecycle management (ALM) model covers project performance management and asset performance management. He emphasized the importance of asset lifecycle information-management, segmented further into project information management and asset information management.
Dr. Gunther Kegel, CEO, Pepperl+Fuchs, shared his thoughts on how innovation in intrinsic safety technology improves plant asset lifecycle management. The innovation involves incorporating dynamic arc recognition and termination solutions. This provides hazardous area protection, an integral part of asset lifecycle management.
The presentation of Trinadh Dwibhashyam, ABB, shared thoughts on real-time measurement of overall equipment effectiveness (OEE), implementing reliability-centered maintenance (RCM), and the role of automation.
In their presentation, Naveen Vashist, Rockwell Automation, and Ketan Merchant, Master Consultancy, addressed the vexing issue of DCS migration that confronts many end users. The speakers dealt at length about migration strategies and approaches.
Sustainable Manufacturing Initiatives in India
The evening’s highlight was the citation and award given to Shree Cement Limited for its concerted efforts towards sustainable manufacturing and achievement in energy savings. R. Bhargava, Shree Cement Limited, spoke about the milestones reached by the company, energy efficiency methods adopted, and how the company manages waste in a responsible and environment-friendly manner. Strategies adopted for economic sustainability have started to yield results.
In general, India’s manufacturing industries are implementing significant initiatives to preserve the environment, with some industries and companies leading from the front. India plans to generate around 20 GW of power from wind and another 20 GW from solar by 2020. ARC has been tracking the developments on the sustainability front and the achievements of companies in the domain of continuous improvement, energy saving, preserving the environment, and such others.
Forum Sponsors
The ARC Hyderabad Forum received excellent support from technology solution providers, industry and professional associations, and the media, who, along with the delegates from electric power, process, and batch industries, contributed for the ultimate success of the forum. ABB, Siemens, Invensys, Rockwell Automation, SAP, B&R, BHEL, Cognizant, GE Energy, Honeywell, IBM, Pepperl+Fuchs, SUPCON, and Wipro sponsored the forum. Industry association sponsors included AIA, AIMO, BDMA, CIO Forum, Cogen India, ICC, MESA International, and ISA. The media sponsors included A&D, Automation.com, Industry Week, Infomedia 18, InTech, Machine Tools, Power Today, and Search. The CIO Klub came in as a business transformation partner and Tech Pro as a Forum Associate.