Schneider Electric launches second smart factory in India

French industrial giant Schneider Electric launched its second smart factory in India on Thursday. The company said it would employ close to 700 people in the new factory.

The factory will manufacture industrial uninterruptible power supply (UPS) systems, along with variable speed drives that regulate the rotation speed of an electric motor, and will use the company’s EcoStruxure architecture and related suite of offerings to drive better process automation, increased operational efficiency and reduce costs in the industrial environment.

“Schneider Electric is committed to developing more than 100 smart factories by 2020, globally, and the Bengaluru factory, which manufacturers IT products and drives that are delivered to customers across the globe, is one of our key smart facilities in this region,” Mourad Tamoud, executive vice president, global supply chain, Schneider Electric, said at the launch.

Tamoud added that the factory demonstrated how the digitization of industrial environments using EcoStruxure can optimize processes for production as well as end-to-end supply chain operations.

The factory also houses a training facility where engineering students from top global institutes get a chance to work on emerging technologies and develop digital solutions, as part of Schneider Electric’s Center of Digital Innovation (CODI) programme. The site will also contributes towards a local skills development programme for underprovided youth through the government of India’s project NEEM (National Employability Enhancement Mission).  

EcoStruxure is Schneider’s open, interoperable, IoT-enabled system architecture and platform through which the company builds a host of automation solutions and energy efficiency solutions globally.

The company’s first smart factory here opened in February 2019 in Hyderabad and has helped close to 500 customers deploy EcoStruxure solutions which help them with their power distribution, management and machine automation needs.

The Bengaluru smart factory is integrated with augmented reality tools which help customers to gain better visibility into operations and maintenance. Schneider Electric said that the digital tools help achieve a 10% reduction in the time required to repair critical equipment.  Meanwhile the digitized processes have also been able to reduce paperwork by 95%.

The site also showcases digital transformation best practices and provides examples on how beneficial digitization of energy management and automation can be in the manufacturing industry.

Apart from the 10% increase in energy savings yearly, the company also said that it will realize a 5% increase in industrial efficiency through EcoStruxure Plant solutions.

The EcoStruxure Machine solutions, along with the augmented reality solution -- the EcoStruxure Augmented Operator Advisor -- has contributed to improved asset availability of 10% while moving away from reactive maintenance and more towards predictive maintenance, it said.

 Apart from India, Schneider Electric has launched smart factories in countries such as Mexico, China, France, USA, Indonesia and the Philippines.