To combat COVID-19 and ensure business continuity
Vedanta Aluminium & Power Business, India’s largest producer of aluminium and value-added aluminium products, has accelerated deployment of cutting-edge technologies and digital solutions to safeguard its workforce against COVID-19 and sustain production to meet the country’s raw material needswith respect tothis strategic metal – aluminium.
Vedanta Aluminium & Power has adopted digital-first ways of working to make its operations future-ready by integrating best-in-class digital solutions, building in efficiencies, and optimizing costs and raw material consumption in its mission to become the world’s leading producer of the ‘green metal’ aluminium. Implementation of automation and digitalization solutions at its the plants have enabled the company to produce high-quality aluminium and value-added products for critical industry sectors, while also providing a step-change in health, safety & environment (HSE) performance parameters.
Speaking on the occasion of National Technology Day, Mr. Ajay Kapur, CEO – Aluminium & Power and MD – Commercial, Vedanta Ltd., said, “Since the outbreak of COVID-19 in India last year, we have fast-tracked adoption of best-in-class digital technologies, intelligent automation and inhouse innovations to safeguard our workforce across Aluminium & Power Business Units. As India’s largest manufacturers of aluminium, a strategic raw material for the country’s key growth sectors, we are ensuring business continuity with reduced manpower to keep the wheels of the economy running. Looking at the rapidly escalating pandemic scenario countrywide, besides ramping up COVID treatment infrastructure and quarantine facilities, we have also pivoted our ways to working to make full use of technology and limit the need for human interventions to sustain operations.”
Few examples of technology deployment by the company to sustain production and support its workforce and communities:
Digital Smelter Solution, the first in India, deployed at its aluminium smelter in Jharsuguda, Odisha, uses digital twin technology for human-less monitoring and control of potline operations, enhances energy efficiency, reduces raw material consumption and arrests wastage of material through remote advisory system.
Digital collaboration platforms with advanced functionalities are enabling seamless connectivity between employees, service providers, customers, and plant sites at all times.
Telemedicine facility for communities at Vedanta’s hospitals in Lanjigarh (Odisha) and BALCO (Chhattisgarh) for e-consultation along with 24×7 medical helpline and home-delivery of medicines.
Digital Logistics Control Towers for coal, alumina and bauxite uses classical Machine Learning and OR (Operations Research) based mathematical modelling to reduce commodity costs, pilferages and process ineffectiveness from mines through plants to ports.
To bolster security of workforce and assets, BALCO, Vedanta’s iconic subsidiary, has developed a highly sophisticated Centralized Security Operations Centre (CSOC) that marries several cutting-edge security solutions like edge-based security analytics for incident detection and response to effective management of security resources on the ground, besides enablement of intelligence collection.
The Manufacturing Execution System (MES) ensures visibility of all critical plant operations and allows for decision making remotely through mobile applications, while employees can maintain social distancing and yet fulfil their activities on the plant floor.
Vedanta Saathi, the company’s recently launched flagship initiative for Indian MSMEs, provides technology augmentations and digital solutions like e-commerce for MSMEs to grow and evolve their business in partnership with Vedanta.