BIRMINGHAM-MUMBAI

The Art of Manufacturing

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First published: February 2023

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ISBN 978-1-80461-945-2

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I would like to thank Sivaram Pothukuchi for always trusting in me and giving me a plethora of opportunities throughout my professional career to learn and grow. I thank my grandfathers, Prabhakar (late) and Dattatraya Bhave (late), for being my role models, from whom I learned immensely. I also thank my parents, Suhas (late) and Tanuja, and my wife Mrunmayee, who constantly supported me in tough times and inspired me to achieve greater heights personally and professionally.

- Ninad Deshpande

Peter Gucher for giving insight into how to realize dreams. To my wife Durga for being by my side while I was dreaming and struggling to realize my dreams.

- Sivaram Pothukuchi

Foreword

Demands made on industrial automation and control are changing rapidly. Consumer demands for products are volatile and variable. Shortcomings in product quality, features, or delivery get instant publicity through social media. Online platforms increase pricing pressures. Regulatory supervision has become more stringent. All of these are demanding on manufacturers. More than anything else, there is a need for flexibility and continuous innovation. To solve these problems, manufacturers turn to industrial automation.

Industrial automation is not a single field of study. It needs a multi-disciplinary approach encompassing, of course, electronics and instrumentation. Beyond that, a good understanding of mechatronic systems is needed. Software is becoming the key factor in all kinds of automation functionalities.

Therefore the study of automation can no longer be restricted to universities. Practitioners of automation need to work on updating their knowledge continuously. Various developments are taking place - advancements are happening in the electronics of controllers and instruments; advances are taking place in communications such as 5G and also in open protocols; new methods of making goods such as additive manufacturing are coming up; the integration of artificial intelligence, personal safety, and new maintenance strategies are gaining ground. So all this has not only an implication for people who design controllers or make software programs. People who need to make specifications for automation become more and more important and face an exciting challenge.

Sustainability is an additional high responsibility for engineers. In the next 50 years, we will see dramatic changes in our living conditions. Climate change is caused by CO2 output in heating and cooling, transport, energy production, production industries, farming, and others. You, as an engineer, can make a big difference, if you consider in all your projects to avoid these CO2 emission factors as much as possible. Energy is a very limited good if it is not produced by burning fossil material. So energy saving in projects will be key. The shortage of other resources (aluminum, copper, lithium, etc.) will be another factor influencing production industries. As a result, each project has to be evaluated on the optimization of resources use and their recycling capabilities for the future. There will also be a shortage of clean drinking water, which is the basis of our living. So the usage of water becomes another key factor in future projects.

Wastewater handling is another responsibility of a project engineer. Take care of our rivers and lakes! Any pollution generated by a plant or factory should be cleaned up before it is released into the air that we all breathe. I hope you do not feel discouraged, but it is the responsibility of engineers to take care of all of that to save our only planet for the next generations.

In this book, Sivaram Pothukuchi and Ninad Deshpande try to present the view of automation from the application use. This, I find, is a good standpoint to take. Modern automation is largely realized by brainware. The quality of automation is determined by the quality of the engineer's thinking and software.

The essential challenges for automation have remained - to manufacture goods with higher quality, higher throughput, and fewer maintenance overheads. Since the aim of automation is to solve the main challenges of manufacturing, it makes sense to go from the problem statement to the control algorithm and jump over the details of the actual electronics.

Sivaram has been a lifelong practitioner of industrial automation and control as a developer and commissioning engineer all throughout his career, which he highlighted by a CEO position at one of the leading automation companies in India. He has a passion for imparting training and working with young people.

Ninad, too, started his career by contributing to various automation projects. Soon he was working on global standards for better interaction of different automation systems, and finally, he started his own company in the field of strategies and market intelligence.

This book will delight any curious students, practicing engineers, and laymen to get behind the scenes and understand how automation plays a role in our daily life and in the future of our planet. I can recommend this book to anyone who is involved with modern factories and machines.

Peter Gucher

Contributors

About the authors

Ninad Deshpande is a writer, storyteller, speaker, and technology evangelist with 15 years of experience in the automation industry, such as application development, marketing, and global product management.

He is an electronics and telecommunication engineer and holds an MBA from Symbiosis Institute of Business Management, Pune. At 30, he spearheaded the Indian marketing activities for a multinational in industrial automation. The World Marketing Congress appreciated his efforts by awarding him the Most Influential Global Marketing Leader award.

I thank my family for teaching me life lessons and consistently inspiring me. I admire the fighting spirit of my mother and my wife and their constant support and motivation, enabling me to achieve my dreams.

Sivaram Pothukuchi is a graduate of IIT Madras and has over 45 years of work experience in automation and control of large processes, such as power plants and power systems and also of machines in many industry verticals, such as plastics, pharma, textiles, and packaging.

He was the non-executive chairman of B&R Industrial Automation. He founded B&R India and built it to be among the top three players in the Indian market in machine and factory automation.

He believes strongly that digitalization technologies must be explored and driven into shop floor applications by young people.

I owe a debt of gratitude to my friend of many decades, Peter Gucher. Another influencer is my wife, Durga Malleswari, who has demonstrated the joy of sharing knowledge.

About the reviewer

Nilesh T. Mehta, who founded TINU TECH SOLUTIONS and has 32 years of experience in industrial automation, is actively advancing robotics and automation technology. He has worked on flatness, thickness control, and guiding systems while visiting 28 different countries worldwide.

He formerly spent 12 years in guiding, tension control, and automatic slitting systems as a director for the Maxcess International Inc. India business in the United States. In the 1990s, he developed thickness measuring with automatic thickness control (AGC), guiding systems for metal industries in India.

His professional path from a village school in Konkan, Maharashtra, to founding TINU TECH SOLUTIONS was more challenging and necessitated a significant deal of dedication to his work.

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