Entrib Technologies is an IT company that uses the Industrial Internet of Things to help manufacturers improve shop floor efficiency with real-time monitoring data.

Production downtime due to labour problems, high rate of rejections due to poor quality of goods, manufacturing costs spinning out of control, etc. are factors that are now quickly slipping into the past. That’s due to the onset of digital manufacturing with modern technologies making the shop floor smarter and bringing all processes absolutely under control. Virtual assistants now include specialised sensors, real-time data communication with remote systems and intelligent software applications, ensuring that productivity targets are constantly maintained and so is the quality. One of the companies engaged in making this possible, using the Internet of Things (IoT), is Pune-based Entrib Technologies.

As its website puts it, “Entrib Technologies is taking digital manufacturing to the next level where your shop floor now fits in the palm of your hands. No matter where you go or where you are and how big your plant is, you are just a click or touch away. This complete and superior control enables you to excel in your business without having to worry about uncertainties on the shop floor.” The Entrib Technologies team is headed by Kiran Nataraj, CEO (also the co-founder) and Swapnil Amritkar, COO. A die-hard Steve Jobs’ fan, Nataraj brings along with him a strong engineering background, having worked with IT companies like Wipro and Persistent Systems in the areas of networking and telecom space.

Amritkar has a strong background in setting and running multi-location teams. An electronics engineer who graduated from the Government College of Engineering, Amravati, he has been working in the IT, telecommunications and embedded software development industry for almost 25 years with long stints in companies such as Wipro and Intel. As to how Entrib Technologies came to be established, Nataraj says, “We saw a need in the manufacturing sector about the shop floor not very well connected to the rest of the management systems so that it became difficult to get any authentic data in a timely manner. We realised that the gap could be filled with newer technologies in a much efficient way as compared to the traditional way of monitoring and managing the shop floor activities. With this in mind, we started this company and our product ShopWorx to apply industrial IoT to the shop floor.”

Elaborating about how IoT helps, Amritkar states, “Authentic and real time data for production and downtime is the need of the hour for manufacturing companies. IoT provides data right from where it gets generated without any manual intervention and it is available as soon as the event occurs, which leads to much more timely action. This helps in improving the productivity. Apart from this, the data is available for future analysis for process improvements, changes in the design, and manpower management. This leads to long-term productivity enhancements. Also, analytics for predictive maintenance reduces the downtime of equipment.”

Adding to it, Nataraj says, “IoT is helping many of our customers to cut down on the response time to machine downtime. That itself improves the efficiency by 5-7% and that too in a very short time. The other impact is that the company gets a true picture of the current efficiency and where it can focus to improve it. It also helps them to reduce delays and errors in getting the data into their ERP systems.”

One of the case studies that reflects how this works is of a customer in the plastic products’ manufacturing domain. The company had many issues related to authentic production data not being available to the management on a timely basis due to delays and errors in manually entering the data in the ERP system. With ShopWorx monitoring the production and pushing the data to ERP system in near-real time, the management now has a much better view of the production in progress. Another example is of an automobile company, which is using ShopWorx to monitor spot welding operations. With ShopWorx monitoring and alarming the welding quality issues as soon as each spot is done, the company is saving an estimated Rs 1.3 crore per year by avoiding scraping or rectifying defects.

With a majority of their clients in the automotive and plastic sectors and the fact that Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is now gaining rapid pace, Entrib Technologies has very aggressive growth plans for the coming months. “We will be expanding horizontally in other verticals like forging, die casting, metal cutting, etc. We have also started offering multiple solutions to connected machines and assembly lines in automotive and consumer product domains. We will also be expanding our solutions to cover predictive (preventive) maintenance and analytics,” Amritkar says.

Expanding on the path that IIoT will now tread, Nataraj states, “As far as Industrial IoT is concerned, which is our focus area, currently the emphasis is on getting information from various sources on to one platform. The next phase will be utilising this data to provide analytics for improvements in processes and design. Other areas of development are seamless connectivity and security - both being very important given the critical nature of IIoT systems.” Indian companies at present are looking at getting authentic data in time, which can be used for decision-making. In developed countries, this is already available. What they need now is using this data to solve production issues and predictive analytics so that actions can be initiated much earlier.

Meanwhile, research and development at Entrib Technologies is given serious importance to be able to take IIoT to the next level. “Our current R&D focus is on cognitive analytics. With this, companies will start making sense of the data being collected and improve their up time by identification of failure points and congestion well in time to take necessary action. Device discovery is another area we are working on,” Amritkar reveals.

– HUNED CONTRACTOR