CHENNAI: Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT-M) will establish a Joint Research Cell with leading Japanese manufacturing firms. A memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed on Wednesday with alfaTKG Co. Ltd., Japan and OKABE Manufacturing Co., Ltd, Japan for collaborating in core areas of manufacturing sector including Research and Development (R&D).
The MoU will pave way for cooperation between alfaTKG, IIT-M and Okabe Co. on areas related to joint research, sponsorship programmes, usage of facilities of alfaTKG, OKABE and IIT-M by each other, and exchange of employees. Speaking about the importance of this collaboration, Bhaskar Ramamurthi, Director, IIT-M, said, “There is a lot of potential for this kind of collaboration with IIT-M. It can also pave way for our students to intern in the partner firms in Japan.
IIT-M has incubated start-ups that are doing amazing work based in IoT and AI that surpass even the big corporates in their technological innovation.”Bhaskar Ramamurthi, Toshio Takagi, president and CEO, alfaTKG, Japan, and Hiroaki Okabe, president and CEO, OKABE Manufacturing Co., Japan, signed the MoU in the presence of Ravindra Gettu, Dean (Industrial Consultancy and Sponsored Research), IIT-M, Periasamy Thanapandi, president and CEO, alfaTKG Integrated Solutions India Pvt. Ltd and others.
As part of the initiative alfaTKG, a pioneer in providing IoT-based solutions for knowledge-driven paperless manufacturing technology in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Japan and other Asian countries, will introduce ‘Genius Artificial Intelligence Assistance’ (GAIA) for efficient manufacturing, machinery utility and health monitoring. Takagi said, “We had a tie-up earlier with IIT-M in 2015 and since then our firm has grown a lot. This is a collaboration so important to the SMEs sector, which also uses a lot of robots and IoT-based solutions.”
The MoU signing event was followed by a special lecture by Toshio Takagi on the Japan GAIAs — AI based IoT Solutions for Manufacturing in SMEs.Speaking about this collaboration, N Ramesh Babu, HoD Mechanical Engineering, IIT-M, who is coordinating this initiative, said, “This collaboration will bring many SMEs from Japan to interact with many start-ups in IITM Research Park to address the issues related to IoT and Industrie 4.0. This will also enable many students and faculty members to interact with Japanese industries in smart manufacturing.”