India’s Leading Bearings Manufacturer takes Digital Transformation to the Next Level

National Engineering Industries Limited (NEI) is India’s leading bearings manufacturer and exporter, renowned for excellence in quality and delivery. A symbol of dependability and flexible engineering solutions, NBC Bearings is the brand of National Engineering Industries.

Founded in 1946, the company started manufacturing 30,000 bearings in 19 sizes. Today, it has grown to manufacture more than 200 million bearings each year offered in more than 2300 variants to service customers in over 30 countries across five continents.

With five manufacturing plants in Jaipur, Newai (Rajasthan), Manesar (Haryana) and Vadodara (Gujarat), NEI is equipped with global manufacturing and world class precision engineering process technology and one of the best research and development centres in the country.

NEI already has next generation technologies such as 3D printing, cobots and robots, automated lines, robotic process automation and mixed reality technology, helping it achieve flexible solutions for its customers.

Servicing the automotive, railways and other industrial segments, NBC Bearings is a trusted brand to customers around the world and as such, demand continues to increase for their high-quality products – reaching all corners of the world.

As a future-ready organization that is always looking ahead to serve its partners better, NEI embarked on a digital transformation journey, achieving outstanding results. It has set its vision to achieve a connected smart factory state for all its manufacturing locations in the next year with multiple roll outs having achieved the desired state at scale at one of its plants in Jaipur.

Drivers for digital transformation

It was not only pure numbers but also the zeal to continue as a great place to work for the next generation and becoming an employer of choice that propelled NEI to undertake an end-to-end digital transformation journey.

Prior to digitalisation, manufacturing process and performance data was manually captured on paper and logged into an application by a data entry operator and was available for analysis with a 24 hour- lag. Essentially, the challenge for line managers and supervisors was having to make decisions for the day based on yesterday’s data. NEI knew that Industry 4.0 technology would be the answer for this. The need for real time data was imminent as it would allow line supervisors and managers to take immediate action on the problematic area, be it related to quality, maintenance or raw material to avoid potential loss in productivity.

The connected smart factory aimed to improve the overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) by 2-3 percent. This was a significant stretch given the baseline of operations were already higher than industry standards.  In addition, NEI’s digital transformation strategy was aiming to help them stay ahead of the competition, with a data driven decision making approach and to change the mindset from being reactive to proactive on the shopfloors - where most of the action is happening.

The digital performance management initiative

The vision was to establish a connected, smart factory in the brownfield Jaipur plant and subsequently at all manufacturing locations, that would enable NEI to meet their manufacturing and business requirements both today and into the future.

NEI’s President and CEO, Rohit Saboo, has envisioned one Connected Enterprise from demand to dispatch with seamless flow of information across the various systems present in NEI landscape.  The high-level strategy for NEI was to create a digital vision to achieve their organisational goals and improve business drivers.

Integrating control and information across the information technology /operational technology (IT/OT) boundary helps to provide real time insights into the manufacturing process to drive more meaningful business decisions. This digital performance management initiative aimed to create a connected smart plant with integrated information from supply chain for factory scheduling, energy management system, resource allocation and material visibility. This is meticulously supported by digital workplace, product and services to enrich employee and business partner experience at every stage of interaction.

“Through the enterprise-wide digital program we have developed a digital strategy roadmap that connects the digital initiatives to the organisation’s strategic priorities. The full-scale implementation was planned for the ball bearing plant in Jaipur and scheduled over an eight-month period. We were able to reach here after lots of experimentation in the preceding year with many start-ups and ecosystem solution providers,” said Ashish Ranjan, chief digital officer, NEI.

This initiative involved connecting more than 300 computer numerical control (CNC) and programmable logic controller (PLC) machines onto the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) network, working on a diverse set of controllers from various makes, models and generations – creating Open Platform Communications United Architecture (OPC UA) data layer and IoT platform deployment to render real time data with reports and dashboards used by various persona in the organisation from the plant floor through to the enterprise.

NEI called on Rockwell Automation as a trusted technology partner for the digitalisation project as a result of the flexibility of the FactoryTalkÆ InnovationSuite, powered by PTC and Thingworx Asset Performance Management (APM) platforms.

Thingworx APM was selected as the application development and deployment platform – connecting disparate devices, applications and data sources across the enterprise. It provides a single source to collect, aggregate, and enables secure access to industrial operations data. FactoryTalk Analyticsô DataView was selected for NEI’s business reporting requirements. This delivered increased visibility into line, shop floor, plant and enterprise performance.

“FactoryTalk InnovationSuite provides a holistic technology portfolio including IoT, analytics, augmented reality and edge capabilities to support NEI’s digital transformation vision. These technologies delivered the required modularity, flexibility and user friendliness to address the immediate techno-functional needs of the digital performance management initiative while helping to ensure the solution is capable of scaling to advanced analytics use cases on the same platform,” said Samrat Datta, information solutions sales specialist, Rockwell Automation.

About Rockwell Automation

Rockwell Automation Inc. (NYSE: ROK), is a global leader in industrial automation and digital transformation. We connect the imaginations of people with the potential of technology to expand what is humanly possible, making the world more productive and more sustainable. Headquartered in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Rockwell Automation employs approximately 24,000 problem solvers dedicated to our customers in more than 100 countries. To learn more about how we are bringing The Connected Enterprise to life across industrial enterprises, visit www.rockwellautomation.com

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