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Balco is now part of Vedanta Resources, a London listed metals and mining
major with aluminum, copper and zinc operations in the UK, India, and Australia.
The plant in India is spread across 6 km, making it difficult to manage
connectivity with the traditional telephony system. Balco had set a target to
produce 5 lakh tonnes of aluminum from its new plant in Orissa.
Balco was initially looking at the conventional way out of its existing
communication problems, but the managing director intervened and suggested that
they should go for a unified communications strategy. According to Subrata
Bannerjee, CIO, Balco, We started to study global trends to know where the
world is moving. We decided to go for a convergent IP telephony. I was given to
understand by some vendors that in our manufacturing set-up, IP telephony would
not be successful. There were views within Balco also that we should not go for
IP kind of solution.
Balco wanted to have a system wherein videoconferencing could be initiated
from the desktop for a better collaborative environment. The other important
part of traditional communication set-up was the conventional push button type
public announcement system.
The plant control systems used to monitor the production was restricted to
the control room. The management wanted to have the convenience of bringing the
monitoring system to the boardroom. There were enquiries whether this could be
done from homes as well. Other challenges were related to attendance, access
control, display board, and connectivity to townships.
It was at this point that Cisco was approached by Balco, which installed a
prototype to understand whether the system will work or not. Balcos top
management tried several components of the system, including video conferencing,
as it was an important way of interacting with customers and vendors.
Once the management was satisfied with the prototype, the management took
time before they choose Cisco considering its IP expertise. Cisco suggested a
set up which included a communication system, LAN, CCTV, public announcement
system, etc. This was due to the number of people involved in the process, and
the need was to converge all communications system into one.
Cisco suggested undertaking a campus-wide deployment of UC solutions with
Ethernet to the floor shop and wireless phones also covering the factory floor.
The IP phone purchase was also done in a phased manner. Incidentally, another
thing that worked in favor of Balco was the cost savings in terms of laying
optic fiber cable, as it managed to source from its sister company Sterlite
Industries.
People who are located at the hot metal plant are bothered about the amount
of production that took place. The solution also helped us to do online
monitoring of hot metal production, adds Bannerjee.
The solution set enabled Balco to experience the benefits of a unified
communication infrastructure with voice, data, video, public announcements over
one network. The earlier paper work of detailing plant production also
decreased. One of the biggest benefits was the remote monitoring of the plant
from multiple locations, empowering the management besides saving precious time.
Earlier, videoconferencing meant the need to go to the room where
videoconferencing equipment was located. Today, we can do it from their
desktops, concluded Bannerjee.
Sudesh Prasad
sudeshp@cybermedia.co.in
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