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Business News/ Industry / Banking/  The smart solution
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The smart solution

The smart solution

Mukul Saxena, senior vice-president and head of Siemens Corporate Research and Technologies. Hemant Mishra/Mint Premium

Mukul Saxena, senior vice-president and head of Siemens Corporate Research and Technologies. Hemant Mishra/Mint

Bangalore: At one end of the conveyor belt, cashew nuts are fed into multiple chutes. There’s the whirr and click of a nearly invisible camera. By the time they reach the other end, the nuts have been sorted—by size, shape and colour.

Between the two ends of this prototype automated system at Siemens Corporate Research and Technologies (SCRT) lab in Bangalore, arrayed on both sides of the conveyor is a network of electronic components—actuators, drivers, controllers—that act together to analyse the image of the nut at unbelievable speeds and in real time. The result is instantaneous sorting by a bunch of parameters that the user can decide.

In its ready-to-use state, the machine can sort 80-120kg of cashews in an hour, says Zubin Varghese, a department head at SCRT. A large-scale grower/operator can deploy multiple machines to help him price his products right, he adds.

“More than one million tonnes of cashew is processed in India every year," Varghese says. “If it’s not automated in four-five years, the country will sure lose out to Brazil."

Mukul Saxena, senior vice-president and head of Siemens Corporate Research and Technologies. Hemant Mishra/Mint

Packaged with customized algorithms and necessary electronics, the camera system can be deployed in a variety of sectors—from security and traffic surveillance to food and beverage industry to high-end imaging in healthcare, says Mukul Saxena, senior vice-president and head of SCRT.

Also Read | Previous stories in the series

Indeed, the list of customers for Siemens ranges from Britannia Industries Ltd (which uses the camera systems for checking whether each biscuit is the right colour and thickness) to ITC Ltd (where a “thinking" camera watches over 18,000 cigarettes zipping by in an hour) to Tata Motors Ltd. For the latter, Siemens has developed a low-cost, camera-based, engine inspection, quality control and documentation system for its Nano small car.

This system is integrated with the assembly line for Nano’s two-cylinder, fuel-injected engine.

The kind of machine vision and real-time analytics that Siemens has installed in its camera systems follows a rapid evolution in recent times, suitably aided by an increase in computing power, a decrease in hardware costs, and progress in digital signal-processing and sensory technologies. The manufacturing industry has been one of the nimblest and the fittest adopters.

But that’s not deterring Siemens. Its industry automation division is working with a local academic institute to develop a solution that will automatically quantify the quality of rice by looking at the grain size, its consistency and the polish of each grain.

If automation companies are developing a machine vision-based system for quality control and testing, they will have to indigenize it and price it suitably for the Indian market, otherwise it will remain in the rarefied realm of R&D (research and development), says Rathi. “That said, Siemens, which has a strong focus on F&B automation globally, is suitably placed to address industry requirements for the Indian market."

Present in India since 1922, European engineering conglomerate Siemens AG operates 22 companies here. Clearly, the Indian market’s price-sensitive nature isn’t unknown to it.

“We are looking at reaching out to 300,000-odd rice mills in the country," says Saxena. Though he declined to comment on the price, he conceded that the new system would cost a “fraction of the price of existing ones".

As for indigenization, Saxena says it’s almost total, to the extent that some of the algorithms and lighting systems are custom designed for the poor ambient light and other conditions on Indian shop floors.

The market for such technologies is ripe. In the food industry specifically, says Rathi, automation will increasingly become a key differentiating factor among competitors, already challenged by low margins, strict regulations and shifting customer preferences.

“A lot more can be done with this technology (machine vision) in the food industry," says H. Das, professor in the food engineering department at IIT Kharagpur. “What Siemens is doing is important as very few people are working in this area in India," he says.

His group has tested Siemens’ technology for grading tea leaves, a highly labour-intensive process.

Most of the SMART products that the German company is developing in India are conceived, developed and even going to be manufactured locally. Simultaneously, they are targeted at global markets, a strategy several multinationals are frenetically adopting, including Siemens’ close competitor General Electric Co. (GE)

When ITC came to Siemens over the niggling problem of choosing the right paper for different brands of cigarettes, little did the German company know that its solution would soon find its way into British American Tobacco Plc. and other such customers.

Devising a low-cost vision system using infra-red light, a split-second inspection unit as it were, Siemens was able to fill a chink in ITC’s quality control armour.

Six years ago, Saxena came from GE to Siemens to set up the SCRT lab in Bangalore. Today, with 90 permanent researchers, and several interns and visiting scholars, it’s one of the foremost research centres within Siemens with global ownership for several technologies, including embedded systems.

And the centre is fortifying its early leads. One of its low-cost camera systems is now being tested in a high-end, conventional imaging device, known as the “C-arm interventional fluoroscopic X-ray system", which is currently being manufactured at its Goa plant.

In its crudest form, the system looks no better than a lens tethered to a small circuit board. But Sornam Vishwanathan, an engineer in the healthcare division, explains how it dramatically improves the image quality of the C-arm. Besides lowering the radiation dosage, it detects even sub-millimeter cracks in other body parts and soft tissues.

The new C-arm is undergoing clinical validation. Siemens expects to move to this platform, which will be produced locally for about $500. That’s almost a quarter of the price that Siemens now pays for a platform made by an original equipment maker for its imaging system.

The smorgasbord of technologies being developed by Siemens in the country is meant for the 700 million Indians that Saxena refers to as the potential new customers at the bottom of the pyramid. They hold the most charm as well as the challenge, he says—be it the affordable grain graders or a corkscrew that purifies waste water, or a portable power plant that produces energy for the entire village using coconut shells.

“We answer the toughest challenges," says Saxena, playing off the company’s tagline—“Siemens answers the world’s toughest questions."

Every Friday, this series chronicles technological innovation and India’s rise as a global R&D hub.

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Published: 05 Aug 2010, 08:16 PM IST
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