Elgi helps ITF members in energy saving up to 43%

Textiles is an important market for us in India, followed by pharmaceuticals and automobiles, said Anvar Jay Varadaraj, head of marketing and corporate communications, Elgi. The air audit programme across 130 textile customers recognised annual savings of Rs 14 crore and 3205 kilowatts.

"One key distinction with Elgi is that we are offering this service for free. This is because that the data and insights will be important for us in terms of customer service and long term quality & product management," Varadaraj said at the press conference.

To support the textile industry’s focus on energy reduction, Elgi partnered with ITF to design a comprehensive energy programme. The air audit programme included information sessions for owners and general managers on the compressed air best practices, practical training sessions for textile maintenance engineers, and critically, free of cost air audit programmes that helped recognise significant cost savings. 

“Air alert is our customer-facing Industry 4.0 initiative. It is a mouthful. It is basically a SIM-based data transmission device, which is attached to every compressor, which will transmit data on every critical operating parameter. The SIM sits in the compressor’s controller and transmits data in real-time to our backend servers," explained Varadaraj.

"In our efforts to compete in the global market, this relationship focused on intelligent energy monitoring and optimising air consumption levels. Elgi enabled us to bring about improved manufacturing efficiency and cost leadership through energy conservation," Prabhu Damodaran, secretary of the ITF said.

"Our relationship with ITF has been a resounding success owing to mutual respect and recognition of value. For Elgi, ITF members have provided generous access to how textile customers are managing their compressed air systems, while mills have benefitted from our expertise. With ITF, we have had an opportunity to directly engage with textile CEOs to understand their manufacturing challenges," said Varadaraj adding that by the end of December 2017 we plan to have 500 machines with air alert. (RR)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk – India