Technology
Thinking outside the (Gear) box !
Published
11 years agoon
By
admin
Gearbox plays an important role in the system of load transmission, and is available in a variety of types, sizes and shapes. ICR feature takes a view on gearbox and its applications.
In the production process of cement manufacturing, there are many hardware which have a very important role to play. Moving equipment like rotary kiln, ball mill, roller press, vertical roller mill, conveyor belts are a few such examples. All of these use gearbox and gear drive. Since the equipment is continuously moving to carry out assigned jobs, the gearbox attached to the equipment requires proper and timely attention for maintenance. Out of these, the most important and critical gearbox is that of rotary kiln and next to that is of vertical roller mill. Among the maintenance fraternity of the cement industry, the subject of failure of a gearbox is largely debated. There have been several case studies inked and distributed across the industry which largely cover various kind of failures of gearbox says Jacob Thomas, Deputy General Manager with TECHPORT-Thane, the support organisation of LafargeHolcim, and a specialist in gearbox.
Incidentally Thomas has a very wide exposure of witnessing different kinds of failure across industry. He initially worked with Flender before joining ACC Ltd, the group company of erstwhile Holcim. He further says that the incidences of breakdown of gearbox have come down drastically in the last 3-4 years, since his peers are doing right job at plants.
Worldwide there are a very few manufacturers of gearbox and gear drive. For cement industry, Flender is a very common name, the other is Renk AG. Both these German companies have presence all across globe including China. One more multinational player that is active is FL Smidth MAAG Gear. Indian companies like Elecon (a very old and notable manufacturer), Vulcan Engineers from Western India, New Allenberry Works from East and Shathi Gears from Southern India also figure in the list. Indian manufacturers are much smaller as compared to that of their multinational counterparts, and their product range is also quite limited. Particularly, manufacturing a gearbox and gear drive for rotary kiln and for vertical roller mill is a super specialty area and requires understanding of user industry and the conditions in which the product is set to be used. An in-depth knowledge of metallurgy is a basic requirement. The product range of these multinational companies not only include gearbox for cement industry, but also includes automotive industry, shipping industry, power generation business, etc.
The first generation of gearbox for vertical roller mills was designed on the basis of a bevel-spur-gear arrangement. The challenge of this design was to balance the ratio of the two-gear stages equally. This allowed keeping the dimensions of the bevel wheel and the spur gear within a manageable range. In order to fulfill the demand of the cement industry, gear suppliers have since chosen a new gear arrangement. The spur gear design was replaced by a spiral bevel helical with multi planetary stage and consequently it was possible to reduce the overall dimension (compact design) and weight compared to the bevel-helical gears.
Nobody realises that a gearbox can have such a complicated design and performance, looking at it from the outside. It is a fine piece of sophisticated equipment produced based on the specifications provided by the client, under stringent conditions and strict quality control.
Sizable capital and efforts are put in by plant personnel in smooth running of rotary kiln and vertical roller mill. Engineers are even sent abroad for training, consultants are hired to have optimum performance of these equipment. Sprat Consultancy based at Kolkata is one such outfit which offers its services right from training to failure analysis to retro fitting of gearbox. The team members of Sprat had earlier worked at Flender and were part of the design and commissioning. They have a vast experience of troubleshooting the gearbox problems not only for the cement industry but also for the other sectors. The article written by Sengupta of Sprat Consultancy imposes the responsibility of smooth running on both – user and supplier. Thomas says that failure occurring at the stage of commissioning is to be treated differently as it relates to the design process of a gearbox. A different approach is to be taken to understand such failures. Failures during running and operation of the plant will altogether need different methodology. The failure of a gearbox cannot be attributed to only manufacturer. Before the order is finalised, the supplier asks for the details of the properties of the product to be processed in the mill and then suitably designs the machine. Any subsequent change in the input material can vary the process parameters and/or lead to improper functioning of the mill or the kiln. Today, due to pressure on becoming competitive, the design margins of the equipment are the least which must be borne in mind by the user. Therefore the saying-?something worked in the past should work now also?-is not acceptable.
By and large these failures press a panic button for the top management, as generally there is no ?spare gearbox? available for either kiln or VRM except in case of planned maintenance.
While investigating the failures-which starts right from the foundation of the machine in case of replacement of old gearbox with the new one and if old foundation is used-proper study must be done before final decision is taken. Another pointer as Thomas says is environment or surroundings of the gearbox. The dusty environment always leads to failure of bearings or motor.
The root-cause analysis is a perfect method to follow in case of failure of a gearbox. Many plants have their own format to carry out the root-cause analysis. Proper recording of the performance parameters is necessary. Debate and discussion on the failure is the first step to follow. Engineers have to update the history sheet of the machine including past failures, change of oil done, replacement of bearings or any other part, etc. The history sheet and the operating manual are two very important documents of the machine. For better results, the teamwork between the process personnel and maintenance engineers is another requirement. Their sharing of information will definitely lead to healthier work environment but can save plant from untimely failures.
Lubrication oil is too important and a challenging subject. Many a times, decisions on lube purchase are commercially driven and not on the basis of the properties of the bought-out items. Present generation of oils have many additives which enhance the performance of the oil and have less moisture absorption. Lower quality or cheaper oil need to be replaced more frequently and wastes precious productive hours which commercial-minded managers rarely appreciate. Experience suggests such decisions can be proved costly in the long run. The money spent on lubrication need not be based on price alone but on performance and price together. The decision on lubes has to be taken after consulting the OEM or the oil manufacturer. Proper documentation on replacement, partial replacement or testing must be maintained. It has been observed that analysis of used oil has been found a reliable source of understanding failures, Thomas says.
There are a good number of software packages available for predictive maintenance, which are purchased by the plant management that need to be used in the best possible way. This feature also covers a glimpse about a company called ?DALOG.? It is a company operating in a very niche area of condition monitoring of a gearbox and charging hefty fees. But industry still prefers to hire its services. Today there is no competitor for DALOG. It also offers service to the gearbox located at any plant from their office in Germany. It is a perfect marriage of instrumentation and information technology.
Involving and motivating technicians who are working with the plant for reasonable length of time have been found to be additional resource. If these people are vigilant and taken into confidence, they can immediately report the abnormalities of the gearbox like excessive vibration, noise or temperature which are the signals given by the machine before breakdown.
In short, gearbox and gear drives are very sophisticated piece of equipment manufactured at world-class manufacturing plants strictly as per the inputs given by the user and have to be used as per the instructions given and understood by the plant personnel. The available latest technology to access the health of the gearbox has to be at the disposal of the plant engineer, and then the incidence of failures will be minimal.
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A deep dive into Power Build’s core gear series products – M, C, F, K
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Economy & Market
TSR Will Define Which Cement Companies Win India’s Net-Zero Race
Published
2 months agoon
April 27, 2026By
admin
Jignesh Kundaria, Director and CEO, Fornnax Technology
India is simultaneously grappling with two crises: a mounting waste emergency and an urgent need to decarbonise its most carbon-intensive industries. The cement sector, the second-largest in the world and the backbone of the nation’s infrastructure ambitions, sits at the centre of both. It consumes enormous quantities of fossil fuel, and it has the technical capacity to consume something else entirely: the waste our cities cannot get rid of.
According to CPCB and NITI Aayog projections, India generates approximately 62.4 million tonnes of municipal solid waste annually, with that figure expected to reach 165 million tonnes by 2030. Much of this waste is energy-rich and non-recyclable. At the same time, cement kilns operate at material temperatures of approximately 1,450 degrees Celsius, with gas temperatures reaching 2,000 degrees. This high-temperature environment is ideal for co-processing, ensuring the complete thermal destruction of organic compounds without generating toxic residues. The physics are in our favour. The infrastructure is not.
Pre-processing is not the support act for co-processing. It is the main event. Get the particle size wrong, get the moisture wrong, get the calorific value wrong and your kiln thermal stability will suffer the consequences.
The Regulatory Push Is Real
The Solid Waste Management (SWM) Rules 2026 mandate that cement plants progressively replace solid fossil fuels with Refuse-Derived Fuel (RDF), starting at a 5 per cent baseline and scaling to 15 per cent within six years. NITI Aayog’s 2026 Roadmap for Cement Sector Decarbonisation targets 20 to 25 per cent Thermal Substitution Rate (TSR) by 2030. Beyond compliance, every tonne of coal replaced by RDF generates measurable carbon reductions which is monetisable under India’s emerging Carbon Credit Trading Scheme (CCTS). TSR is no longer a sustainability metric. It is a financial lever.
Yet our own field assessments across multiple Indian cement plants reveal a sobering reality: the primary barrier to scaling AFR adoption is not waste availability. It is the fragmented and under-engineered pre-processing ecosystem that sits between the waste and the kiln.
Why Indian Waste Is a Different Engineering Problem
Indian municipal solid waste is not the material that imported shredding equipment was designed for. Our waste streams frequently exceed 40 per cent to 50 per cent moisture content, particularly during monsoon cycles, saturated with abrasive inerts including sand, glass, and stone. Plants relying on imported OEM equipment face months of downtime awaiting proprietary spare parts. Machines built for segregated, low-moisture waste fail quickly and disrupt the entire pre-processing operation in Indian conditions.
The two most common failures we observe are what I call the biting teeth problem and the chewing teeth problem. Plants relying solely on a primary shredder reduce bulk waste to large fractions, but the output remains too coarse for stable kiln combustion. Others attempt to use a secondary shredder as a standalone unit without a primary stage to pre-size the feed, leading to catastrophic mechanical failure. When both stages are present but mismatched in throughput capacity, the system becomes a bottleneck. Achieving the 40 to 70 tonnes per hour required for meaningful coal displacement demands a precisely coordinated two-stage process.
Engineering a Made-in-India Answer
At Fornnax, our response to these challenges is grounded in one principle: Indian waste demands Indian engineering. Our systems are built around feedstock homogeneity, the holy grail of kiln stability. Consistent particle size and predictable calorific value are the foundation of stable kiln combustion. Without them, no TSR target is achievable at scale.
Our SR-MAX2500 Dual Shaft Primary Shredder (Hydraulic Drive) processes raw, baled, or loosely mixed MSW, C&I waste, bulky waste, and plastics, reducing them to approximately 150 mm fractions at throughputs of up to 40 tonnes per hour. The R-MAX 3300 Single Shaft Secondary Shredder (Hydraulic Drive), introduced in 2025, takes that primary output and produces RDF fractions in the 30 to 80 mm range at up to 30 tonnes per hour, specifically optimised for consistent kiln feeding. We have also introduced electric drive configurations under the SR-100 HD series, with capacities between 5 and 40 tonnes per hour, already operational at a leading Indian waste-processing facility.
Looking ahead, Fornnax is expanding its portfolio with the upcoming SR-MAX3600 Hydraulic Drive primary shredder at up to 70 tonnes per hour and the R-MAX2100 Hydraulic drive secondary shredder at up to 20 tonnes per hour, designed specifically for the large-scale throughput that higher TSR ambitions require.
The Investment Case Is Now
The 2070 Net-Zero target is not a distant goal for India’s cement sector. It starts today, with decisions being made on the plant floor.
The SWM Rules 2026 are already in effect, requiring cement plants to replace coal with RDF. Carbon credit markets are opening up, and coal prices are not going to get cheaper. Every tonne of coal a cement plant replaces with waste-derived fuel saves money on one side and generates carbon credit revenue on the other. Pre-processing infrastructure is no longer just a compliance requirement. It is a business investment with a measurable return.
The good news is that nothing is missing. The technology works. The waste is available in every Indian city. The government has provided the policy direction. The only thing standing between where the industry is today and where it needs to be is the commitment to build the right infrastructure.
The cement companies that move now will not just meet the regulations. They will be ahead of every competitor that waits.
About The Author

Jignesh Kundaria is the Director and CEO of Fornnax Technology. Over an experience spanning more than two decades in the recycling industry, he has established himself as one of India’s foremost voices on waste-to-fuel technology and alternative fuel infrastructure.
Concrete
Reimagining Logistics: Spatial AI and Digital Twins
Published
3 months agoon
April 13, 2026By
admin
Digital twins and spatial AI are transforming cement logistics by enabling real-time visibility, predictive decision-making, and smarter multi-modal operations across the supply chain. Dijam Panigrahi highlights how immersive AR/VR training is bridging workforce skill gaps, helping companies build faster, more efficient, and future-ready logistics systems.
As India accelerates infrastructure investment under flagship programs such as PM GatiShakti and the National Infrastructure Pipeline, the pressure on cement manufacturers to deliver reliably, efficiently, and cost-effectively has never been greater. Yet for all the modernisation that has taken place on the production side, the end-to-end logistics chain, from clinker dispatch to the last-mile delivery of bagged cement to construction sites, remains a domain riddled with inefficiencies, opacity and manual decision-making.
The good news is that a new generation of spatial computing technologies is now mature enough to transform this reality. Digital twins, spatial artificial intelligence (AI) and immersive augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) training platforms are converging to offer cement producers something they have long sought: real-time visibility, autonomous decision-making at the operational edge, and a scalable solution to the persistent skills gap that hampers workforce performance.
Advancing logistics with digital twins
The cement supply chain is uniquely complex. A single integrated plant may manage limestone quarrying, kiln operations, grinding, packing and despatch simultaneously, with finished product flowing through rail, road, and waterway networks to reach hundreds of regional depots and distribution points. Coordinating this network using spreadsheets, siloed ERP data, and phone calls is not merely inefficient; it is a structural liability in a competitive market where delivery reliability is a key differentiator.
Digital twin technology offers a way out. A cement logistics digital twin is a continuously updated, three-dimensional virtual replica of the entire supply chain, from the truck loading bays at the plant to the inventory levels at district depots. By ingesting data from IoT sensors on conveyor belts and packing machines, GPS trackers on road and rail fleets, weighbridge records, and weather feeds, the digital twin provides planners with a single, authoritative picture of where every ton of cement is, in real time.
The value, however, goes well beyond visibility. Because the digital twin mirrors the physical system in dynamic detail, it can run scenario simulations before decisions are executed. If a primary rail corridor is disrupted, logistics managers can model alternative routing options, shifting volumes to road or coastal shipping, and assess the cost and time implications within minutes rather than days. If a packing line at the plant is running below capacity, the twin can automatically recalculate dispatch schedules downstream and alert depot managers to adjust receiving resources accordingly.
For cement companies operating multi-plant networks across geographies as varied as Rajasthan and the North-East, this kind of end-to-end situational awareness is transformative. It collapses information latency from hours to seconds, enables proactive rather than reactive logistics management, and creates the data foundation upon which AI-driven decision-making can be built. Companies that have deployed logistics digital twins in comparable heavy-industry contexts have reported reductions in transit time variability of up to 20 per cent and meaningful decreases in demurrage and detention costs, savings that flow directly to the bottom line.
Smart logistics operations
A digital twin is only as powerful as the intelligence layer that sits on top of it. This is where Spatial AI becomes the critical differentiator for cement logistics.
Traditional logistics management systems are reactive. They record what has happened and flag exceptions after the fact. Spatial AI systems, by contrast, are proactive. They continuously analyse the state of the logistics network as represented in the digital twin, identify emerging bottlenecks before they crystallise into delays, and recommend corrective actions.
At the plant gate, AI-powered visual inspection systems using spatial depth-sensing cameras can assess truck conditions, verify load integrity and confirm seal tamper status in seconds, replacing the manual checks that currently slow throughput. At the depot level, Spatial AI can monitor stock drawdown rates in real time, cross-reference them against pending customer orders and inbound shipment ETAs, and automatically trigger replenishment orders when safety thresholds are approached. In transit, AI systems processing GPS and telematics data can detect anomalous vehicle behaviour, including extended stops, route deviations, speed irregularities and alert fleet managers instantly.
Perhaps most significantly for Indian cement logistics, Spatial AI can optimise the complex multi-modal routing decisions that are central to competitive cost management. Given the variability in road quality, seasonal accessibility, rail rake availability, and regional demand patterns across India’s vast geography, the combinatorial complexity of routing optimisation is beyond human planners working with conventional tools. AI systems can process this complexity continuously and adapt routing recommendations as conditions change, reducing empty running, improving vehicle utilisation and cutting fuel costs.
The agentic dimension of modern AI is particularly relevant here. Agentic AI systems do not merely analyse and recommend; they act. In a cement logistics context, this means an AI system that can, within pre-authorised boundaries, directly communicate revised dispatch instructions to plant teams, update booking confirmations with freight forwarders and reallocate available rail rakes across plant locations, all without waiting for a human to process a recommendation and make a call. For logistics executives, this represents a genuine shift from managing a workforce to setting the rules of engagement and reviewing outcomes. The operational tempo achievable with agentic AI simply cannot be matched by human-in-the-loop systems working at the pace of emails and phone calls.
Bridging the skills gap
Technology investments in digital twins and spatial AI will deliver diminishing returns if the human workforce cannot operate effectively within the new systems they create. This is a challenge that India’s cement industry cannot afford to underestimate. The sector relies on a large, geographically dispersed workforce, including truck drivers, depot managers, despatch supervisors, fleet maintenance technicians, many of whom have been trained on paper-based processes and manual workflows. Retraining this workforce for a digitised, AI-augmented environment is a substantial undertaking, and conventional classroom or on-the-job training methods are poorly suited to the scale and pace required.
Immersive AR and VR training platforms offer a fundamentally different approach. By creating photorealistic, interactive simulations of logistics environments, such as a plant dispatch bay, a depot yard, the interior of a cement truck cab, allow workers to practice complex procedures and decision-making scenarios in a safe, consequence-free virtual environment. A depot manager can work through a simulated rail rake delay scenario, making decisions about customer allocation and communication
without the pressure of real orders being affected. A truck driver can practice the correct procedure for securing a load of bagged cement without the risk of a road incident.
The learning science case for immersive training is compelling. Studies consistently show that experiential, simulation-based learning produces faster skill acquisition and higher retention rates than didactic instruction, with some research indicating retention rates three to four times higher for VR-based training compared to classroom methods. For complex operational procedures where muscle memory and situational awareness matter as much as conceptual knowledge, the advantage of immersive simulation is even more pronounced.
Today’s leading cloud-based spatial computing platforms enable high-fidelity AR and VR training experiences to be delivered on standard mobile devices, removing the hardware barrier that has historically made immersive training impractical for large, distributed workforces. This is particularly relevant for cement companies with depots and logistics operations in tier-two and tier-three locations, where access to specialised training hardware cannot be assumed.
The integration of AR into live operations also creates ongoing learning opportunities beyond formal training programs. As an example, maintenance technicians equipped with AR overlays can receive step-by-step guidance for equipment procedures directly in their field of view, reducing error rates and service times for critical plant and fleet assets.
New strategy, new horizons
India’s cement industry is entering a period of intensifying competition, rising logistics costs, and demanding customers with shrinking tolerance for delivery variability. The companies that will lead over the next decade will be those that treat logistics not as a cost centre to be minimised, but as a strategic capability to be built.
Digital twins, spatial AI and immersive AR/VR training are not distant future technologies, they are deployable today on infrastructure that Indian cement companies already operate. The question is not whether to adopt them, but how quickly to do so and where to begin.
About the author:
Dijam Panigrahi is Co-Founder and COO of GridRaster Inc., a provider of cloud-based spatial computing platforms that power high-quality digital twin and immersive AR/VR experiences on mobile devices for enterprises. GridRaster’s technology is deployed across manufacturing, logistics and infrastructure sectors globally.
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