NITT Workshop on Recent Trends in Industrial Process

 The Department of Instrumentation and Control Engineering (ICE) and the Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli (NIT-

T)  is organising a Workshop on the 'Recent Trends in Industrial Process Automation (RTIPA) from 1-2-2019 to 5-2-2019. Industrial automation is the key to make the process industries competitive. It is an important component of industrialisation. Except a few operations, many processes and systems could be automated. It would help the companies reduce the expenditure and make them competitive. There is a great scope for automation in Supervisory control and Data Acquisition System (SCADA), Distributed Control System (DCS) and Programmable logic controller (PLC).

Dr N Sivakumaran, Professor & Coordinator, Dept. of ICE welcomed the gathering and spoke on the objective of course to provide knowledge on the state-of-the-art technologies in the field of Wireless, Internet of things (IoT) and Cloud computing, which in turn would enable to establish industry institute interaction. The Technical sessions will be handled by the experts from Yokogawa India Limited, Gantner Instruments India Pvt. Ltd., Siemens Centre of Excellence (CoE), BHEL Trichy and faculty members from NIT-T. The Hands-on training sessions shall be provided in the areas on Industrial IoT, PLC, DCS as well as the process test rigs at Industrial Automation laboratory, Department of Instrumentation and Control Engineering and Seimens centre of excellence (CoE). Dr.B.Vasuki,Head,Dept of ICE briefed about the department facilities and informed the participants to utilise the facilities available with us.

Dr.S. Rominus Valsalam, Former Head of Control & Instrumentation Engineering, Department and Director of ERDCI Institute of Technology, CDAC, Thiruvananthapuram inaugurated the workshop and delivered the inaugural address emphasising the need for close interaction between Industry and Academia to solve the problems faced by the Industry. Consequently, they can offer the masses of the country products and services that are less costly & better quality with less emissions to the atmosphere. This assignment will ensure cyber-security in all the systems and will manifest the characteristics of attack resilience. We had been using Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) Systems, Distributed Control Systems (DCS), Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC) and Remote Terminal Units (RTU) for Industrial Process Automation. Presently, these systems are augmented with intelligent systems, advanced controls and Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) to fetch data even to the horizon of the Internet. Hosting the data to the cloud enables the comparison of similar systems worldwide to take quick decisions. This collaborative exercise between the two organizations is advantageous in terms of the transition of technology and the growth of automation intelligence. The academic institutions can find out solutions to the problems with their strong foundation in Process Modelling, State Estimation, Advanced Control Algorithms, Optimization Techniques, Intelligent System Technologies, Image Processing and Signal

Processing Algorithms. The industries can identify the problems, procure the necessary equipment and implement the solutions offered by the academia in their plants. The Chief Guest explained these concepts with examples from the drinking water, thermal power, solar power, sugar, cement and steel industries.

He also added," I am happy to see NIT, Tiruchirappalli is doing consultancy work and research projects for providing solutions to industrial problem. This is one of the very important outcome for establishing industry institute interaction".

Dr.K.Srinivasan, Associate Professor & Coordinator, Dept of ICE thanked the gathering.

Eminent professionals from industries like M/s Tamil Nadu Newsprint and Papers Limited (TNPL), Karur, Adani Ennore Terminal, Chennai, Sundaram Fasteners Limited, ALSTOM etc., and faculty members from academic institutes are attending the workshop.

The workshop were coordinated by Dr N Sivakumaran, Dr K Srinivasan, Department of Instrumentation and Control Engineering and Dr G SaravanaIlango, Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli.