Pune based Kirloskar Oil Engines Limited (KOEL) has been undergoing a digital transformation in the last couple of years. The company strongly believe in leading the global generating set industry through the wave of digitization.
This truly ‘Make in India’ company has started replacing its manual operated gen set with the newly introduced Internet of things powered power generating, which made it smarter along with remote monitoring. This range is aptly called an i-Green series. These products come with an in-built feature like remote monitoring of the DG set. The DG actually does a self-diagnosis and reports if any problem electronically to the control room. The DG safeguards itself against any possible fatal eventualities.
Sanjeev M Nimkar, COO, KOEL says, “We have been developing this i-Green series of power gen-sets in for last three years, which are more smart and intelligent compared to our traditional sets. Henceforth all our products will be sold with this technology. Moreover, we will be replacing our existing installed base of 700,000 sets with this range in a phased manner.”
KOEL claims to have 30 % plus market share and is first to introduce technologically advanced intelligent DG sets. DG set will switch on automatically once grid power is off and switch off automatically once grid power is on. KOEL is the first company in India to offer this feature as standard offering right from 5 kVA onwards.
KOEL driving digital transformation
The company bets big on digital and has invested Rs 50 crore in the last five years on software to automate its supply chain and servicing capabilities. “We started our digital journey first in-house and later with our stakeholders and now with our new range of product innovations, we are now digitally connected with our customers. The remote monitoring will reduce the burden of random servicing issues and can fix L1 support issues with the help of application and software. This is a big change we are driving in this industry,” Nimkar highlights.
Working on futuristic technologies
After revamping the power gen-set range now the company has started focusing on hybrid gen sets. As India is focusing on clean energy sources like solar also the power stability is improving. The company is bringing product innovations which will cater to all these emerging needs like smart building and homes. Additionally, the company is gearing up for industry 4.0, bringing robotic and machine learning technologies to its factories. “’Hybrid’ is future, works on intelligent logic. The business in which we operate is back up, with more infrastructure progress and project coming up, we see more gen-sets will be needed,” he concludes.
