Economy & Market

Predictive maintenance is a top priority in industrial IoT

Published

2 years ago

August 23, 2024

Roshna

Kapil Agarwal, Senior Vice President and Local Division Manager, Process Industries, ABB India, discusses how advanced digital solutions are revolutionising the cement industry by enhancing operational efficiency, reliability, and sustainability.

How does ABB Ability™ Knowledge Manager help cement plants connect business KPIs to operations and optimise their performance?
ABB Ability™ Knowledge Manager (KM) is a true manufacturing operations management solution which, in a single platform, integrates data from operational, control, production, quality, downtime and business systems and converts data into actionable information.
At its core, ABB Ability™ Knowledge Manager offers industry-specific process and quality data warehousing, presenting information in a meaningful way. This single, powerful tool meets various needs: production information and downtime management, production scheduling, energy cost tracking and benchmarking, plant emissions monitoring and alarm analytics. Its user-friendly and intuitive statistical analysis tools boost both production and quality.
Statistical production analysis offers powerful tools to monitor quality-related process variables effectively. It helps verify if these variables are randomly scattered around the mean and normally distributed, and it detects variability and process changes to prevent instability. Some key tools we use include X charts (Shewhart), EWMA charts, CUSUM charts, histograms, and multivariable X-Y correlation graphs.
To enhance transparency across a plant or fleet of plants, our KM is available via a mobile app for smartphones and tablets. This allows plant and company managers to view operational performance anytime, anywhere. ABB Ability™ KM is highly scalable to meet customer needs, with flexibility for plant-level, regional, and enterprise-level deployment. It helps cement customers track processes, quality, operations, emissions, and downtime using standardised custom templates, IoT connectors and seamless ERP integration, all backed by excellent security policies.

How does ABB’s shift from reactive to predictive maintenance impact the operational efficiency and reliability of cement plants?
Predictive maintenance is a top priority in industrial IoT because it combines data, domain expertise, IoT platforms and AI. This combination allows manufacturers to predict anomalies in their plants. I believe, by using a modern asset optimisation system, cement manufacturers can shift from reactive to predictive maintenance strategies, avoiding unnecessary maintenance and reducing operating costs. This is achieved through the vast amount of data generated by smart devices connected in the plant, such as motor control centers, numerical relays, smart transmitters, and various asset models for motors, transformers, grinding circuits and conveyors.
ABB Ability™ Predictive Maintenance service leverages digital applications for quick detection of impending issues, root-cause analysis with recommendations, and assessment of severity levels and health indexes. It offers ready-to-use standard models that are easy to deploy and scale, helping to identify active conditions, assess health with severity and ensure easy deployment.

What are the key features of ABB’s AI-based Asset Performance Management (APM) suite, and how does it enhance asset optimisation in cement plants?
Predictive asset models can help cement plants operate with fewer workers, and to manage operations remotely. An APM solution, powered by predictive asset models, would give the remote teams full visibility into data that would tell them the health of all the assets in the plant. Think of AI-enabled APM as the most cost-effective way to extend the life of the aging (and newer) assets, to decide on the optimal timing for scheduled maintenance turnarounds (one of the biggest costs in a plant) and plan better. The new AI-based APM helps develop models, algorithms, dashboards and reports using a maintenance-oriented platform. It integrates with enterprise-level systems and evolves into digital strategic asset management. This makes transitioning from predictive to prescriptive maintenance and management possible.
ABB was approached by one of Asia’s largest manufacturers of grey cement, ready mix concrete and white cement. The customer has 19 integrated plants, one clinkerisation plant, 25 grinding units and seven bulk terminals. Working together with ABB domain experts, the company used maintenance-oriented algorithms that alerted the client to the potential failure of a particular part or electronic device, allowing it to perform predictive rather than reactive maintenance. Combined with a range of other digital solutions, including ABB Ability™ Expert Optimizer and ABB Ability™ Collaborative Operations, the customer was able to achieve ROI in eight months, a reduction in costs by 3-5 per cent and increase in the life cycle of assets. In this way, cement manufacturers can fully utilise the power of digitalisation to reduce energy usage and emissions, paving the way for the smart, sustainable and profitable cement plants of the future

With increasing digitalisation, how does ABB ensure the cybersecurity of cement plant operations and protect against potential cyber threats?
More and more cement producers on the digitalisation path would like to take a more proactive approach to cyber security. ABB’s analytics solutions and services continuously monitor, diagnose and resolve security issues, helping safeguard people, assets and reputation. Because technology and cyber threats can both change unpredictably, the strategy needs to be reviewed periodically, including performing simulations under different circumstances, like a major ransomware incident.
ABB realises that its customers are concerned about protecting against and minimising the risk of a cybersecurity incident. While asset owners have prime responsibility for any incident response procedures, ABB actively monitors for any cybersecurity threats that pose a potential impact to ABB control systems. All in all, ABB is well positioned as a systems integrator – a factor that is foundational to the company’s cybersecurity strategy in the industrial controls arena. There are two aspects to this. The first is that the customer can trust that implementation of a third party solution in ABB’s reference architecture will result in optimal value. The second is that the cement manufacturer can rest assured that if there is a failure or a problem with implementation, it will, in all probability, not impede the availability or safety of assets and will ease their recovery. ABB has been ensuring its customers by following the highest level of security policies during design, development, deployment and communications by adhering to the industry best practices.

– Kanika Mathur

Up Next

Sustainability audits and process optimisation

Don't Miss

Smart Cement Plants

Economy & Market

TSR Will Define Which Cement Companies Win India’s Net-Zero Race

Published

3 days ago

April 27, 2026

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

WCA Welcomes SiloConnect as associate corporate member

Published

2 weeks ago

April 13, 2026

admin

The World Cement Association (WCA) has announced SiloConnect as its newest associate corporate member, expanding its network of technology providers supporting digitalisation in the cement industry. SiloConnect offers smart sensor technology that provides real-time visibility of cement inventory levels at customer silos, enabling producers to monitor stock remotely and plan deliveries more efficiently. The solution helps companies move from reactive to proactive logistics, improving delivery planning, operational efficiency and safety by reducing manual inspections. The technology is already used by major cement producers such as Holcim, Cemex and Heidelberg Materials and is deployed across more than 30 countries worldwide.

Concrete

TotalEnergies and Holcim Launch Floating Solar Plant in Belgium

Published

2 weeks ago

April 13, 2026

admin

TotalEnergies and Holcim have commissioned a floating solar power plant in Obourg, Belgium, built on a rehabilitated former chalk quarry that has been converted into a lake. The project has a generation capacity of 31 MW and produces around 30 GWh of renewable electricity annually, which will be used to power Holcim’s nearby industrial operations. The project is currently the largest floating solar installation in Europe dedicated entirely to industrial self-consumption. To ensure minimal impact on the surrounding landscape, more than 700 metres of horizontal directional drilling were used to connect the solar installation to the electrical substation. The project reflects ongoing collaboration between the two companies to support industrial decarbonisation through renewable energy solutions and innovative infrastructure development.