Automation has recently found its huge benefits in process industries

'Automation has recently found its huge benefits in process industries, such as increased productivity, quality and safety at low  costs'

The Department of Instrumentation and Control Engineering and the  Department of Production Engineering, National Institute of  Technology, Tiruchirappalli organised a Workshop on Industrial Process  Automation (IPA) from 2nd to 8th August 2019 sponsored by All India  Council for Technical Education (AICTE) under the Margdarshan Scheme.  Dr N Sivakumaran, Professor and Coordinator welcomed the participants  
and mentioned that Industrial automation is the key to make process  industries competitive. He added that except for a few operations,  many processes and systems could be automated, which would help the  
companies to be cost-effective and energy-efficient. Dr S Kumanan,  Professor (HAG) and Coordinator said that there is a great scope for  automation to increase Quality and Flexibility in Process industries  
using Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition System (SCADA),  Distributed Control System (DCS) and Programmable logic controller  (PLC).

Dr K. Srinivasan, Associate Professor and Coordinator highlighted the  objective of the course i.e., to provide state of the art technologies  in the field of Wireless, Internet of things (IoT) and Cloud  computing, and expressed that this would enable to establish  industry-institute interaction. The Technical sessions were handled by  
the experts from Yokogawa India Limited, Gantner Instruments India  Pvt. Ltd., Siemens Centre of Excellence (CoE) and by the faculty  members from NIT-T. The Hands-on training in subjects on  Cyber-Physical Systems, IoT, PLC, DCS as well as process test rigs  shall be provided at Industrial Automation Laboratory, Department of  
Instrumentation and Control and Seimens centre of excellence (CoE).

The Training includes hands-on sessions in PLC, SCADA, DCS, Human Machine Interface (HMI), Highway Addressable Remote Transducer (HART)/  Fieldbus/ Profibus/ Wireless protocols for Industrial Automation,  
Cyber Security threats, Industrial IoT, Industrial 4.0 and Cloud-based  architecture of Industrial Automation.  Simulation software-based  training on design of classical and advanced controller design for  
linear/non-linear processes was also organised.

Ms R. Mahalakshmi, AGM, Yokogawa India Limited, Bangalore 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. She thanked AICTE for initiating such  industry-institute interaction training for faculty members to enhance  the skill set and update their knowledge on industrial requirements.  
She stated that they 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. 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 and Signal Processing  Algorithms. The industries can identify the problems, procure the  necessary equipment and implement the solutions offered by academia in  
their plants.

Prof M. Chidambaram, Visiting Professor, Dept. of Chemical  Engineering, NIT Warangal and Former Director NIT, Tiruchirappalli  delivered his valedictory address stressing the need for automation in  
the industrial sector and stated that automation in the past was used  to increase productivity and to reduce the cost associated with human  operators. However, today, the focus of automation has been shifted to  
increasing quality and flexibility in the manufacturing processes. He  was overwhelmed to see many faculty members (from Mentee Institute and  Non-mentee institutes) who were actively interacting with the experts  
and he felt that such corresponding initiatives would enhance  extensive research in industrial requirements and promulgate R&D  avenues in the field of Industrial Process Automation.The workshop was coordinated by Dr S Kumanan, Production Engineering  Dept., Dr N Sivakumaran and Dr K Srinivasan, Department of  
Instrumentation and Control Engineering.