Piramal Glass adopts Microsoft's Azure IoT to boost operational efficiency

Indian conglomerate Piramal group’s glass-making unit has adopted Microsoft Corp’s Azure internet of things platform to increase operational efficiency by enhancing real-time visibility to analyse production losses.

Piramal Glass Pvt. Ltd and Microsoft said in a statement that the implementation of the so-called Real-Time Manufacturing Insights (RTMI) solution has cut costs by up to 70%.

The RTMI solution uses Azure IoT Hub, which acquires data from sensors on production lines to identify quality parameters at each stage and get insights on production line efficiencies in real time.

The solution provides stage-wise losses, production reports, quality-control workflows as well as role-specific Key Performance Indicators on PCs and smartphones of plant personnel. The solution also sends actionable alerts if an anomaly is detected.

Mumbai-based Piramal Glass is one of the largest makers of special glass containers globally for beauty, pharmaceuticals and food industries, with facilities in India, the US and Sri Lanka. Its plants have a total capacity of 1,375 tonnes per day, 12 furnaces and 60 production lines in all.

Piramal Glass said that while many of its digital initiatives started as experiments, a number of these have been scaled up.

Microsoft has tied up with Pune-based startup Precimetrix Technologies Pvt. Ltd to bring the latter's plant monitoring system for Piramal's factories. Precimetrix’s system will be hosted on Azure Microsoft's Azure Internet of Things (IoT) platform to analyse production losses in real time at Piramal Glass’s factories.