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CII meet on metals, components sector

Kohinoor Mandal

THE Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) has organised a three-day exhibition, christened Metcomp 2000, in Calcutta between November 22 and 24. It is intended as a meeting ground for organisations engaged in the metals and components sector and a good number of allied sub-sectors.

Metcomp 2000 has within its purview ferrous and non-ferrous metals and alloys, powder metallurgy, composites, cutting, welding and joining, metal casting and forging, machining and machine tools, heat treatment surface finishing and engineering, process control and measurement, destructive and non-destructive testing and testing equipment, software, computer-aided design modelling and manufacture, material handling equipment, energy saving and environment control, consultancy and project management, R&D , metal and plastic components for automobiles, consumer durables, industrial machinery, electronics and electrical equipment and components for mining and construction machinery, defence equipment, railways, ship building, telecom, power plants and refi neries.

A few of the segments and concepts covered by the exhibition are discussed here in brief:

Machine tools

The domestic machine tool market is largely dominated by general purpose machine tools. Most of the Numerical Control (NC) and Computer Numerical Control (CNC) machines in the domestic market are imported. The increasing demand for advanced machines has prompted the machine tools industry to go in for modern technology.

By and large, the industry is witnessing a positive trend, of shifting from general purpose machines to CNC machines. The machine tool industry perceives that the production of CNC machines would significantly increase in the coming years, thanks to the Government's liberal policies.

The confidence of the domestic automobile manufacturers in the Indian machine tool industry has increased, making the industry optimistic about the future. Some big automobile and other companies have made significant purchases from the industry, which i s an encouraging sign.

Various programmes are being conducted from time to time by professional bodies to improve the quality of machine tools. The Centre's policy of liberalisation has made machine tool units quality and cost-conscious and they are better placed to meet the d emands of the new competition.

Several measures have been taken by manufacturers to improve their corporate image and practise the concepts of quality, reliability, competitive pricing and advanced technology. Attention is also being given to improve the quality of bought-out aggregat es, such as hydraulics, pneumatics, electricals and sheet metal.

Materials management

This subsystem, which forms an integrated part of a decision support mechanism, serves to provide control over all components, materials and services required to support the operation of heavy earth moving machinery (HEMM).

Corporate success in the mining sector is achieved through a controlled level of material expenses by:

W Introducing IT-based workflow to integrate materials management, thereby reducing paperwork for approvals.

W Reducing HEMM's breakdown time by timely procurement of spare parts.

W Reducing the administrative lead times required for effecting procurement of HEMM spares.

W Reducing inventory by using scientific cataloguing systems, ABC Analysis, automated purchasing, advanced materials planning and optimisation techniques.

Effective cataloguing techniques using bitmap imaging for component level spares can be adopted for cross references through manufacturers' part numbers, part names, unique inventory (stock) entry code for item master generation in the inventory subsyst em. Search engines are available for generating the parts from the primary catalogue even by unskilled mine personnel.

Bulk material handling system

Material handling plays an important role in all industries as it involves cost and time. It accounts for 30-75 per cent of the product cost, depending on the industry and products.

Material handling can be classified under two categories - Unit Handling and Bulk Handling. Unit handling deals with materials which are separate; discrete items such as bags, billets, containers, equipment, spare parts, etc. Bulk Handling deals with mat erials which are transported in large volumes such as coal, iron ore, flakes and grain, among others.

In practice, all bulk material handling systems have one common requirement. There should be a streamlined flow of materials from various sources by different modes of transport. This requirement is best met by buffer stockpiling.

Computerisation

Computers were introduced in the Indian mining industry in the 70s. To start with, its applications were confined to analyses of drill hole data for geostatistical and ore reserve estimation. Thereafter, considerable progress was made in exploration and exploitation of various minerals. Larger mining companies developed computer applications with in-house facilities in the area of geostatistics, ore body modelling, deposit evaluation, mine planning and scheduling.

Programmes mostly used in mining industry are Surpac, Datamine, Techbase, Minex and Crystal. A software package called Prism, capable of detailed analysis in relation to project planning and monitoring for new and ongoing projects, is widely used.

The Indian Bureau of Mines along with BRGM, France, completed a major project for the integration of its computerised databases a few years ago. It consists of national mineral inventory, production information, lease data, world mineral intelligence inf ormation and data on external trade and consumption. The integration is augmented by a Geographic Information System (GIS) capable of producing modern graphic outputs of the integrated databases. This would enable updating of data and managing it in a mo dern computer set-up.

Marking a definite departure from the past, mining equipment maintenance, breakdown analysis, spare parts management and inventory control are also computerised in a good number of mines throughout the country.

Computerised spare parts management system comprises three modules.

1. Indent processing and tracking module.

2. Purchase orders data base module.

3. Annual projections data base and materials release orders module.

The three modules are integrated for necessary information on purchase orders and sanctions against any spare part that is logged on.

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) and enterprise asset management (EAM)

There is a distinct difference between ERP/EAM in the mining industry from the ERP/MRP-II of the manufacturing sector.

In a general manufacturing set-up, materials procurement planning activity has a direct linkage with production and capacity planning. In the case of the mining industry, production planning is related with the capacity and utilisation of HEMMs. Logicall y, for the mining industry-specific condition, materials procurement planning cannot have direct linkages with production planning.

The systems in vogue have utilities pertaining to project management, materials management, inventory planning and control, operations & maintenance management, life cycle costing, advanced planning and scheduling, fleet size optimisation in real time, g eological ore body modelling, financial management, performance engineering, executive information systems, production information programs interface, supply chain planning and optimisation from a strategic point of view, sales and distribution, human re sources management. Each module has been tested over a period of time and used in a variety of mines all over the world.