Bearing Producer Implements Smart Manufacturing

How important is paper to your facility?

Before NBC Bearings committed to digital transformation, data was captured on paper and logged into a non-real time system with a 24-hour delay. That means people were using yesterday’s data to make today’s decisions.

Obviously, that’s not ideal for a company that wants to improve manufacturing operations through enhanced analytics.

Origin Story

National Engineering Industries (NEI) is part of the CK Birla Group, a US $1.6 billion conglomerate. NBC Bearings, part of NEI, is India’s largest bearing manufacturer.

NBC Bearings wanted to develop a digital strategy roadmap, connect digital initiatives to the organization’s strategic alignment, and implement a comprehensive change management program to address people and process.

In short, NBC Bearings wanted to engage people across the organization in achieving a smart factory – so the organization can acquire real time, accurate data for plant floor decision-making, improved predictive maintenance and increased overall equipment effectiveness (OEE).

Connected Smart Factory Starts With People

A connected smart factory was part of a transformational vision for NBC Bearings. The digitalization initiative would connect more than 300 machines and PLCs to a single Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) network.

On one IoT platform, NBC Bearings could render real-time data, reports, and dashboards for use by a multitude of people spread across the plant and through the enterprise.

In addition to improving OEE 2-3%, the team’s goals included a paperless factory that empowers decision-making at all levels.

“With real-time information from the shop floor and factory, I wanted my front-line people to be empowered with data-driven decision-making,” said Rohit Saboo, president and CEO of NEI. “The production quality, machine held data are now available with the head of the plant or the workmen in the plant. And the benefits are evident.” 

As a comprehensive execution plan was formulated, the team was challenged with helping all stakeholders see the complete picture and end-to-end activities involved.

Each stakeholder had a different priority. Through change management, all stakeholders aligned to select use cases based on business impact, ease of implementation, organization-wide coverage (number of users impacted), cost of implementation, benefits and ROI.

Empowering Decision-Makers

Rockwell Automation®, through its 2019 acquisition of MESTECH provided the application development services for PTC’s Thingworx platform, part of FactoryTalk® InnovationSuite. The MESTECH acquisition expands Rockwell Automation’s consulting and systems integration scale in this fast-growing industrial transformation market.

The transformation team was comprised of domain experts from in-house manufacturing functions and digital team members who acted as translators and facilitators from business to technology. IT managed the hardware, networking and connectivity, and IoT Platform experts rolled up the data from machines into a visualization layer to give frontline supervisors, plant leaders and personnel decision-making empowerment.            

As a result of implementing smart manufacturing initiatives at scale, NBC Bearings now has advanced analytics, the use of augmented and mixed reality for shop floor training, collaborative workflows for streamlining information flow, the use of QR Codes and workflows for process integration, machine vision for inspection, and real-time workforce planning.

Connecting Digital Strategy to Overall Strategic Goals

More than 90% of the full-scale implementation was handled remotely.

Having a mix of earlier generation controllers and equipment made it even more important to find an agnostic solution like FactoryTalk InnovationSuite to bring all machines onto the same platform.

The digital strategy is connected to the organization’s overall strategic goals via a digital house that “connects the vision and goals to digital themes, initiatives and business drivers that this initiative would bring in the company,” said Saboo.

Functional leads from human resources, finance, research and development, manufacturing, quality, sales and marketing, and supply chain took up the mantle of core leadership in the digital transformation arena.

As a result, Saboo expects to see revenue increase three-fold and an increase in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization. “We also will experience greater inclusion and diversity in the next 3-5 years that will make the organization a great place to work for the next generation,” he said.

Hearing From The People

Because of this work, the company now has an online Innovation and Idea management platform, accessible by all plant locations. Each idea and innovation undergoes a standard and tested approach towards implementation and those that fall under ‘Just Do It’ are implemented without lengthy development and approval cycles.   

"We have institutionalized a process of governance to measure the progress of initiatives and there is a key measurement area for each initiative,” said Saboo. “Based on this success our employees are more open to innovation and are encouraged to bring their ideas and concepts to life.”