Chennai, 14th November 2018: Indian Institute of Technology Madras is going to establish a Joint Research Cell with leading Japanese Manufacturing Firms. A Memorandum of Understanding was signed today (14th November 2018) with alfaTKG Co. Ltd., Japan and OKABE Manufacturing Co., Ltd, Japan, for collaborating in core areas of manufacturing sector including Research and Development (R&D).
The MoU will pave way for the cooperation between alfaTKG, IIT Madras and Okabe Co., Ltd on areas related to joint research, sponsorship programs, usages of facilities of alfaTKG, OKABE and IIT Madras by each other, exchange of employees between them.
Speaking about the importance of this collaboration, Prof Bhaskar Ramamurthi, Director, IIT Madras, said, “There is a lot of potential for this kind of collaboration with IIT Madras. This collaboration can also pave way for our students to intern in the partner firms in Japan. IIT Madras has incubated startups that are doing amazing work based in IoT and AI that surpass even the big corporates in their technological innovation.”
Prof Bhaskar Ramamurthi, Mr. Toshio Takagi, President and CEO, alfaTKG, Japan, and Mr. Hiroaki Okabe, President and CEO, OKABE Manufacturing Co., Ltd, Japan, signed the MoU in the presence of Prof Ravindra Gettu, Dean (Industrial Consultancy and Sponsored Research), IIT Madras, Dr. Periasamy Thanapandi, President and CEO, alfaTKG Integrated Solutions India Pvt. Ltd and others.
This agreement will help India to foray into the paperless manufacturing, which is revolutionizing the manufacturing sector across the globe. As part of the initiative alfaTKG Co., Ltd, a pioneer in providing IoT-based solutions for knowledge driven paperless manufacturing technology in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Japan and other Asian Countries, will be introducing ‘Genius Artificial Intelligence Assistance’ (GAIA) for efficient manufacturing, machinery utility and health monitoring.
Addressing the event, Mr. Toshio Takagi, President and CEO, alfaTKG, Japan, said, “We had a tie-up earlier with IIT Madras in 2015 and since then our firm has grown a lot. This is collaboration so important to the SMEs sector, which also uses a lot of Robots and IoT-based solutions. We have to provide the new solutions to the market.”
The MoU signing event was followed by a special lecture by Mr. Toshio Takagi on the Japan GAIAs – AI based IoT Solutions for Manufacturing in SMEs.
Speaking about this collaboration, Prof N. Ramesh Babu, Head, Department of Mechanical Engineering, IIT Madras, who is coordinating this initiative, said, “This collaboration will bring many SMEs from Japan to interact with many start ups in IITM Research Park to address the issues related to IoT and Industrie 4.0. This will also enable many students and faculty members to interact with Japanese industries in smart manufacturing.”
Industrial automation is revolutionising the manufacturing sector including the shop floor. On November 2015, the ambitious ‘Make in India’ and ‘Digital India’ Initiatives of the Union government got a boost with alfaTKG Co. Ltd., a pioneer in providing Industry 4.0 technology, and IIT Madras signing a MoU over Industry 4.0, which is revolutionizing the manufacturing sector across the globe.
The MoU will help the stakeholders to work on paperless manufacturing technology as the paper is inefficient, creates errors and problems, and doesn’t allow for the advanced analytics and real-time visibility and control a modern shop floor needs. Paperless manufacturing removes paper, and the errors and problems it causes, off the shop floor. Information is automatically converted to electronic data to be transmitted digitally. The required documents and drawings are hyper linked and are locked with revision-control, ensuring everyone is using the latest, most accurate information. All processes are automatically tracked in the system.
Cyber-powered technology innovation in the field of industrial operations is adding new dimensions to Sheet Metal Product manufacturing sector and smart manufacturing systems integrating the whole process. Uniting the factory floor with enterprise-based systems and decision makers are made possible through the IoT-based solutions.
OKABE Manufacturing Co., Ltd is a leader in SME in Japan, tier 1 supplier for Hitachi for ATM machines. The industry with highly automated sheet metal fabrication machinery now employ robots and working together IoT Solution Provider alfaTKG to impart Deep learning on AI-based technologies to operate multiple robots in a cooperative manner to provide premium quality components in a faster manner without human involvement. The company is also planning to develop learning-based assistance systems for the work centers those are human driven. alfaTKG and Okabe India would offer internship to conduct field study and validation of the outcome of the proposed R&D Collaboration with IIT Madras.
