Post lockdown these tools will help keep organizations leaner and avoid rework. It will help them achieve cost savings and remain competitive in the market, says Nimesh Chinoy, Marketing Director, SigmaWeld, Electronics Devices Worldwide Pvt Ltd.

How will the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and robotics be the next great technological asset for cutting and welding in the post lockdown period?
Almost everyone has lost 2-3 months of quality production time. Going ahead, the availability of manpower on the shop floor is bound to get impacted. This is where automation will help in scaling up productivity with limited resources without compromising on quality or efficiency.

Robotics or automation will also help upskill people, helpers will become welders and welders will become operators. The automated systems will help them to be productive and efficient in what they do. Post lockdown these tools will help keep organizations leaner and avoid rework. It will help them achieve cost savings and remain competitive in the market.

Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) will allow the end user to keep a track of resource utilization. A time based report can be generated, it will show arching hours per day, per month, per year, it can show equipment utilization in hours or % of shift time available. These are much needed data to explore if there is a need to buy or reutilize the resources on hand.

By keeping a tab on all the welding parameters, the possibility of human error will reduce and as a result right weld joints can be created in the first attempt itself. With our SigmaWeld DMS and Server side software, the welder uses their RFID Cards to login to the welding machine and start welding thereafter. This gives them a sense of responsibility and ensures quality work each time. We are working closely with some Indian Robot Manufacturers, which will help give localized solutions that meet all objectives and keep an eye on the costs as well.

In India, however, what kind of market adaptability do you foresee towards this development?
The hesitancy in adopting new technologies is always there usually because our manpower was always available and cheaper. Now opportunity costs are much higher, on one hand, India has the possibility to take a fair share of the international market from China, on the other, we will need to become the lowest cost producers of quality products. Robotics and IIoT will pave the way to lower the cost of production and ensure timely deliveries even when the uncertainty of manpower exists on the shop floor.

We have seen a very keen interest from our customers (new and old) for the SigmaWeld DMS (Data Monitoring System) and they can be coupled with any existing equipment on the shop floor to help you analyse your data quicker. This ultimately has helped many of our customers in being productive and curb delays in delivery.

Robotic solutions are good where variability is high; if you have a standard product with repeated joints a much lower cost SPWM (Special Purpose Welding Machine) can do the job. There is and will be a good demand for such systems which will help simplify the job of the welder and increase his throughput

Are your products IoT enabled?
What are some of the other products you believe will witness some traction in the subdued economic climate? We have two solutions for IoT; one is a Data Monitoring System (SigmaWeld DMS) which helps with your basic data such as welding current, voltage, gas flow, wire consumption. These systems can be used with any welding machine of any kind, so you do not need to reinvest in the entire machine. This has seen a lot of traction and these are also single equipment solutions or multi-equipment solutions. So in case you have a big shop floor with say 40 welding machines, you could use 40 sensor boxes, 10 collection units and they would put all the data on a server (local).  This means you can be sitting in the office and have a dashboard which shows you all your 40 welding machines, which are on , which are off, who (welder) is welding on which machine at what parameters. All of this is on your fingertips without having to change the welding equipment at all.

We also have our SigmaWeld Pro Series of fully digital welding inverters. These have the option of being completely IoT enabled. We have a radio frequency transmitter, which transmits all data to the server via an antenna. So you would know who welded, when, for how long, at what parameters, which programs did they use, which gas was used, how much gas and consumable was used.  Everything can be viewed on your phone via the WiFi setup or on the server. You can get all kinds of reports that you need from the same.

Our company believes in quality, Made in India products will see traction. Products which help increase productivity both for the manual welder and automated systems will see a good growth in demand. Like our HOT and COLD wire feeder for GTAW, which helps the welders increase their productivity by 30 per cent in manual welding while saving consumable cost by upto 10 per cent (stub end loss). Simple automation solutions will also see a good demand.

How are you managing the sales and service in the post lockdown period?
We have been conducting webinars and informative interaction sessions with most of our customers, where we have had the opportunity to discuss with the customers team online and share our knowledge and solutions for their exact needs. Sales teams have been visiting only where it is of utmost need, most places video calls or phone calls are okay for people to interact and digital platforms are being used unlike before to have virtual meetings.

We have a very efficient after sales service team. Usually, most of our customers have had the basic training in all our machines, our team is helping them using video calling to guide and help where they are not able to reach due to travel restrictions. We are also developing AR (Augmented Reality) solution for our installation and service of all our equipments, this will be a different revolution in our field and I believe it will help resolve many problems wherein  Artificial Intelligence and expert systems will show the user how to test, repair or replace parts and get the machine up and running in to time.