A Pilot Project for ushering in ‘Industry 4.0' in the country, is launched for implementation at the Modern Coach Factory (MCF), Raebareli. The Ministry of Railways and Department of Science & Technology have joined hands in partnership with IIT Kanpur for taking up a unique project on ‘Industry 4.0’ by launching a Pilot Project for implementation at Modern Coach Factory, Raebareli.

The launch ceremony saw an exchange of Ideas between Railway Board (Member Rolling Stock), Shri Rajesh Agrawal, Secretary Department of Science & Technology Shri Ashutosh Sharma, Professor N.S.Vyas of IIT Kanpur, DG RDSO Shri Virendra Kumar, General Manager MCF Shri V.M. Srivatsava some other senior officials of the Railway Board, and the Ministry of HRD.

Speaking on the occasion Secretary Department of Science & Technology Shri Ashutosh Sharma said that his department has recently launched a new programme “Interdisciplinary Cyber-Physical Systems (ICPS)” to foster and promote R&D in this emerging field of research. He said about 4000 crore rupees are expected to be spent in years to come in this area. Railway Board (Member Rolling Stock), Shri Rajesh Agrawal, said that today's initiative is expected to make India an advanced Industrial economy with exponential growth in jobs.

‘Industry 4.0’ commonly referred to as the fourth industrial revolution, is a name given to the current trend of automation, interconnectivity, and data exchange in manufacturing technologies to increase productivity. Industry 4.0 is a complex Cyber-Physical system that synergizes production with digital technologies, the Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence, Big Data & Analytics, Machine Learning, and Cloud Computing.

Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi in his address in Houston, USA on 22nd Sept’ 2019 had highlighted the importance of ‘Industry 4.0’ in a global economy and India's advantage.

The project launched today would be undertaken under the aegis of “Technology Mission for Indian Railways” (TMIR). It would be implemented by a consortium of the Ministry of Railways, Ministry of Human Resource Development, and Ministry of Science & Technology on an investment sharing model for taking up identified railway projects for applied research and use on Indian Railways for advancement and modernization. 

Industry 4.0 is a complex cyber/physical-digital system. Therefore, the architecture to be conceptualized and formulated in MCF initially would be gradually expanded in a phased manner to encompass all complexities that constitute Industry 4.0 in all manufacturing spheres in the country. 

Full transition to the digital factory using ‘Industry 4.0’ across the entire value chain from design to production will help enhance productivity hugely by providing insight into the production process to make the decisions on a real-time basis, minimizing human errors by effective monitoring to ensure that resources are put to the best utilization measured by, what is called the Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE).

Such a National Policy for Advanced Manufacturing envisages that the manufacturing sector should contribute at least 25% to GDP. All over the world, countries that have been able to achieve phenomenal growth could do that with the advent of rapid strides in the manufacturing sector. This initiative in Railways may have wider ramifications to spur growth in defense production as well as in the private manufacturing sector also. 

Modern Coach Factory (MCF), Raebareli was established as a State of the Art coach manufacturing unit with the capacity to manufacture 1000 passenger coaches annually and has modern automated machines and robotic fabrication lines. During the last year, MCF has increased its production phenomenally to 1425 LHB coaches in 2018-19 vis-à-vis 710 LHB coaches in 2017-18. This was enabled significantly by the adoption of elements of Industry 4.0. on sophisticated machines. Inspection of MCF by the Prime Minister in December 2018 has been an inspiration to proliferate this initiative.

Given the continuous demand for higher speed coaches with the comfort of international level and to meet the demand of a continuously growing economy, there is a need to employ the tools which will improve the productivity to the next higher level with greater product flexibility.

Industry 4.0 would be based on cyber/physical-digital system and would involve various packages, systems, applications, and Hardware within Design/Planning, Networking, and Production to be added in a modular and incremental manner in MCF

Various shops under the ambit of Industry 4.0, areas such as Inspection, Machining, Welding, Measurement, etc., will also be provided with the initial & Bigdata Analytics, Artificial-Intelligence, etc.

Source: Press Release
Release ID: 1586545
PIB
Ministry of Railways
Date: September 28, 2019