Indian manufacturers look beyond automation to make factories smarter

Businesses are monitoring live production feed online to improve efficiency and reduce cost of manufacturing

Despite automating several processes at its factories in the US, Sri Lanka and India, specialty glass maker Piramal Glass struggled to bring costs under control owing to huge losses on the production line. To fix this, the company recently turned to technology giant Microsoft for one of its smart factory solutions.

Using Azure IoT Hub, Microsoft helped Piramal Glass acquire data from sensors installed at the production lines to identify quality parameters at each stage and get insights on line efficiencies in real-time. This works in tandem across the company’s 46 production lines across four plants -- Kosamba and Jambusar