Centre of Excellence on Advanced Manufacturing Technologies launched at IIT Kharagpur

In the presence of Union Minister of State for Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises, Babul Supriyo, DHI's Joint Secretary N. Sivanand signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with IIT Kharagpur.

The Centre of Excellence (CoE) has received a PPP funding of Rs. 65.19 crore, of which Rs. 47.62 crore (80 per cent) has been provided by GOI and the remaining has been arranged by IIT Kharagpur itself and several private industries.

A key focus of the CoE will be to make the Indian Capital Goods sector globally competitive and support the imminent need to increase the depth in manufacturing through innovation and technology up-gradation in four important areas, namely Speciality Materials, Process Automation, Additive manufacturing and Digital interventions as envisaged in Industry 4.0.

Talking about the CoE, IIT Kharagpur's director, Partha Pratim Chakrabarti said, "It was exactly a year back when Shri Babul Supriyo shared his vision with us and we unanimously agreed that such a Centre is the need of the hour. Consequently we came up with the proposal of the Centre of Excellence on Advanced Manufacturing Technologies for Heavy Industries with a strong focus on the technologies which will usher India into the emerging era of Industry 4.0."

"The CoE will aim to bridge the divide between the requirements of the leading manufacturing firms of India and the ability of SMEs to meet those requirements in globally competitive terms," Chakrabarti said.

Union Minister of State Babul Supriyo, who attended the event, said, "A state-of-the-art center on advanced manufacturing technologies in Eastern India has been long overdue. I have intensely felt the need for the resurgence of small and medium scale enterprises in the region, which needs to get more competitive with the rest of the country."

"My vision is to achieve this through a common platform of academia, corporate houses and enterprises which must come together in a synergistic way. It is my firm belief that IIT Kharagpur, with its extensive experience in industrial research and incubation is the best choice to lead this initiative,” Babul Supriyo said.

Pallab Dasgupta, Dean of Sponsored Research at IIT Kharagpur, said, "It is unique for the leading industrial houses in India to come together to form a consortium and jointly support an academic Center on Advanced Manufacturing Technologies."

"We chose the consortium model for industrial partnership because the need for infusion of next gen technology in the manufacturing sector transcends domestic competition and needs concerted cooperation of all industrial houses in this sector," Dasgupta said. "The consortium will also enable self-sustainability of the Center beyond the period of DHI support.”

The CoE is aimed to create an ecosystem for indigenization and innovations in the manufacturing sector involving small and medium scale enterprises.

The Innovation Lab at the Centre will be accessible to SMEs and Startups to gain expertise in modern technology usage and upgradation, said the Institute.

According to CoE's technical lead Surjya K Pal, the SMEs will receive hands-on training to develop modern technologies and capacity building to boost supply to large scale industries and this will also have a long term effect leading to import substitution.

“The Centre will have state of the art physical infrastructure for Additive manufacturing like 3D printing, Advanced joining facility e.g. robotic and micro friction stir welding,  Diagnostic and metrological inspection systems such as CT scan, Industrial IoT with lab facilities for sensors, backend analytics and research," Surjya K Pal said.

"All of these are targeted towards Industry 4.0, the next gen industrial evolution with intelligent machines, health monitoring and connected manufacturing through digital interventions, robotics and automation”, he said.

(Reporting by Deepayan Sinha, Images by Souvik Das/IBNS)