Automation in steel industry need of hour: RINL CMD

Visakhapatnam, May 12 : Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Ltd, (RINL), also known as Vizag Steel plant (VSP), Chairman and Managing Director Atul Bhatt on Thursday said “The automation in the steel industry is the need of the hour and the scope of growth of automation and robotics isimmense.
Addressing after launching “Open challenge program (OCP) 2.0’, virtually at RINL, Atul, saidthe equipment developed by the startups will give return on investment by RINL very fast asthey help in energy savings and will also help in running the process safely”.
India is the second largest steel industry in the world and it is also one of fastest growingindustries, with the emphasis given by the growth of infrastructure by our Government, headded.
The program is the second program in the series of OCP programs that are being launched byKalpataru-CoE (Centre of entrepreneurship).
This open challenge program is for selecting the startups in the field of Industry 4.0technologies,
The project, CoE on Industry 4.0, is being taken up jointly by STPI (software technology park ofIndia) , MeitY(Ministry of Electronics & IT) and RINL, and Govt. of AP. This is expected to makeIndia ‘Atamanibhar’ in the field of Industry 4.0 technologies.
The CoE will have an IIOT (Industrial Internet of Things) lab, an Industrial Automation Labwith AI & ML (Artificial intelligence & Machine learning) and AR & VR (Augmented Reality andVirtual reality) lab, one more industrial automation Lab with Robotics and Drone, a thirdIndustrial automation lab with Robotics and 3D printing.
The CoE will incubate around 175 start-up companies over a period of 5 years. 50 startupcompanies will be incubated in physical mode and 125 companies will be incubated in Virtualmode.
The programme was also graced by A.K. Bagchi, Director (Projects) & additional charge Director(Operations) RINL and Member of PMG- Kalapataru, CVD Ramprasad, Director STPIHyderabad and COO STPINEXT, Dr. Suresh Batha, Additional Director and Officer In charge,STPI Visakhapatnam.
The start-up companies along with industry mentors will work on the problems of RINL andother industries in and around like HPCL, NTPC, BARC, HSY and BHEL.