Smart Manufacturing - CIMCON Digital

Case Study - Smart Manufacturing

Real Time Monitoring of Water & Energy Consumption for the Textile Division of a Manufacturing Unit

Client : Arvind Mills

The Project

Arvind mills is a global leader in apparel manufacturing as well as one of the largest textile manufacturer from India. It is headquartered in Naroda, Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India with one of its facilities in Santej, Gujarat, India. The company manufacturers cotton shirts, knits, and denim. For the manufacturing of the shirts and denim, the company pays high utilities for water and electricity.

Arvind treats water as a natural resource, ensuring that their operations put as little stress on freshwater as possible. Every pair of blue jeans requires about 1880 gallons of water to manufacture. Additionally, 400 gallons of water are consumed in manufacturing one T-shirt. Arvind Mills wanted to optimize their water and electricity usage to decrease costs and increase machine efficiency. Arvind Mills installed flow meters and energy meters to measure the flow of water and the electricity consumed. However, they were unable to monitor these utilities in a centralized, thorough manner.

Introduction

The company, Arvind Mills, was founded in 1931 and headquartered in Gujarat, India. The company has more than 42,000 employees and generates annual revenue of $1 billion. The company manufactures apparel and textiles including its own brands like Flying Machine and Newport as well as licensed international brands like Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin Klein. Arvind also runs three clothing & accessories retail chains: the Arvind Store, Unlimited, and Megamart.

The Work

The work includes design, testing, supply, installation, and commissioning of a Centralized Energy Analytics System with a Remote Terminal Unit (RTU) / Edge Units and Analytics Application for the knit unit and shirting unit This equipment was used to monitor utilities in the Santej Mill production line to improve the machine health, optimize water usage, and fine-tune energy consumption. It was also be used to reduce unplanned manufacturing unit downtime.

Scope

The project scope included design, manufacturing, supplying, installing, commissioning, and documenting the SCADA system consisting of an RTU with 10 analog inputs and an energy meter connected over a wired network with a SCADA Software.

Benefits

Some of the benefits of installing the system are the following:

Reduction in water consumption by 10% and energy consumption by 15%
Remote monitoring, improving efficiency and helping the manufacturing plant to take proactive measures to prevent higher O&M cost.
Alarms were generated for exceptional errors, reducing maintenance costs and unplanned downtime
The system set the benchmark for electricity and water use for the manufacturing unit. Arvind Mills continues to use these capabilities to optimize their use of natural resources.

Arvind Mills Woven & Knits (Santej) recorded a 45% decrease in freshwater consumption in FY 2018-19 compared to FY 2014-15

These positive changes occurred notwithstanding increases in production volume across woven, denim, and garment segments during the reporting period – freshwater consumption at Arvind Mills has decreased during this time.

The Solution

CIMCON provided Arvind Mills with an RTU/ Edge device that had 10 analog inputs and a centralized SCADA facility. Data from individual flow meters and energy meters were acquired via the RTU and were sent to the Central Energy Analytics Application where the parameters were monitored.

CIMCON offered SCANET software and provided a local monitoring SCADA software with customized graphic pages. This was installed in the PC to ensure seamless data integration and machine monitoring.

CIMCON had its own development team in Ahmedabad that understood the needs of Arvind Mills and customized the SCANET software accordingly.

Parameters Monitored by the RTU/ Edge device

Voltage, current, and power consumption of the pumps.
Overcurrent and overvoltage.
Water temperature, line pressure, and water flow rate.

The RTU/ Edge device was responsible for the following functions

1

Acquiring data from the connected instruments/sensors (e.g., flow meter, energy meter), logging/storing data with time stamping, and retaining data in case of power failure.

2

Make the flow rate, totalized flow, pressure, temperature, voltage, and current data available at the central station and to predefined mobile devices. Any alarm generated is reported to the central station through SMS automatically, independent of the normal data transmission schedule.

3

Maintaining a configurable data transmission frequency; the RTU/ Edge Device can transmit data to a remote central station following a pre-programmed schedule.

4

Remotely monitoring all parameters for improving machine health.