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Highlights
- Tata Chemicals Limited (TCL), a global leader in soda ash and vacuum salt manufacturing, has embarked on a journey to digitalise factories. TCL has envisioned adopting Generative AI to make the plant workforce more productive.
- “Samartha Sarathi” is an initiative by TCL to develop AI assistants for technicians at soda ash and vacuum salt manufacturing plants. This project aims to digitise the maintenance knowledge available within the factory, including user manuals, specification documents, standard operating procedures (SOPs), and troubleshooting guides, and to provide instant guidance to users in multiple languages.
- By leveraging Microsoft Azure’s robust capabilities, TCS developed a tailored Gen AI solution, inspired by the proprietary TCS AI advisor for plant operators. This innovative tool empowers TCL technicians by significantly improving their productivity, enabling 20% faster repairs and reducing mean time to resolution (MTTR).
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The Context: Complex operating conditions and staying ahead of the curve
In a bid to navigate operational complexities across its chemical manufacturing facilities and stay ahead of the curve by adopting rapidly evolving technologies, TCL invested in enhancing its machinery management and workforce capabilities. One of the key focus areas is the Robotics Autopacker, a sophisticated machine with multiple moving parts, used for packing soda ash and vacuum salt. Due to its high level of automation, continuous operation, and inherent complexity, the equipment requires significant operational oversight and maintenance. Enhancing rapid fault identification and structured troubleshooting approaches can significantly help improve overall equipment reliability.
The documentation supporting maintenance for a wide range of complex equipment of different vintages - spanning multiple generations of engineering from legacy systems to contemporary assets, is extensive and challenging to navigate. This complexity can slow down fault resolution and onboarding processes.
Rino Raj
Vice President & Site Head, Mithapur (Gujarat), Tata Chemicals Limited
Digital is rapidly becoming our plant’s operating system, playing a central role in our operations’ management, improvement and scaling. Developed in partnership with TCS, Samartha Sarathi has gained substantial traction in troubleshooting and reducing downtime.
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Samartha Sarathi – An AI advisor on the factory floor
TCS has developed a Gen AI-based interactive solution leveraging Microsoft Azure and OpenAI GPT technologies for the TCL workforce. This solution is designed to streamline documentation access, enhance fault detection, and improve workforce competency across diverse manufacturing locations.
Solution features
Extracts and digitises information from various document formats, making it easily searchable and accessible for technicians.
Offers a human-like interaction experience through free-text queries. Users can ask questions about machinery operation, troubleshoot, analyse root causes, and receive recommended fixes in their native language.
Azure OpenAI responses are enhanced with tagged images of machinery, enabling technicians to more effectively visualise and interpret the information.
Azure Translation services have been fine-tuned to support Gujarati better, ensuring non-English-speaking technicians can comprehend technical content with ease.
Supports hands-free operations with voice-in and voice-out capabilities, allowing users to interact with the system while working on machinery.
Built with extensibility in mind, the solution can be readily adapted to support multiple machines and deployed across diverse production lines and manufacturing facilities. Following the successful implementation of Samarth Sarathi for auto‑packer machine troubleshooting, the solution is now being extended to other equipment, including plant variable frequency drives (VFDs), generators, and troubleshooting the effluent solid filtration plant’s complex automation system. It is also being utilised for instrumentation troubleshooting across various instruments, as well as for general standards awareness. The solution further incorporates ethical AI guardrails and compliance mechanisms to ensure trust, safety, and data integrity.
Transformational impact: Strategic advantage delivered
Samartha Sarathi, inspired by the proprietary TCS AI Advisor for Plant Operator solution, significantly improved the productivity of the plant workforce. This resulted in 20% faster repairs and reduced MTTR.
Business value and benefits
Digitised and centralised knowledge: By digitising equipment manuals and logs, the solution will create a centralised AI knowledge base, simplifying information retrieval and enhancing operational efficiency.
Enhanced productivity of individuals: The solution will streamline workflows and enhance productivity by providing digitised and centralised knowledge, enabling swift knowledge retrieval and natural language interaction.
Agility to rapidly onboard and enable the next-generation workforce: The solution will enhance workforce training and competencies, enabling young or less experienced workers to effectively maintain production lines.
Natural language interaction: Leveraging AI guidance with step-by-step instructions for operations, maintenance, and troubleshooting, the solution will simplify complex tasks and improve user experience.
Availability of best practices across factory locations: The solution will standardise and share best practices across all factory locations, enhancing consistency and efficiency.
Reduced operations cost: By improving fault identification and maintenance, the solution will reduce downtime and operational costs.
Innovation meets expertise
Samartha Sarathi represents a transformative leap in integrating AI into the daily operations of the factory workforce. Designed to support upskilling, democratise knowledge, and enhance productivity, it enables the workforce to maintain machines and production lines with greater confidence and efficiency.
TCS, leveraging its deep manufacturing expertise and commitment to innovation, developed Samartha Sarathi as a forward-looking productivity solution for the TCL plant workforce. This initiative showcases TCS’s unique ability to translate strategic vision into impactful, scalable solutions.
The success of Samartha Sarathi is rooted in a comprehensive approach:
Innovation at scale: Leveraging TCS’s global leadership in AI and cloud technologies, the solution is built to address current operational needs while being scalable for future growth.
Collaborative partnership: Close collaboration with Tata Chemicals ensured that the solution was tailored to real-world workflows, driving high adoption and measurable impact.
Girish Phadke
Head - TCS Microsoft Azure Practice
We are pleased to partner with Tata Chemicals to reduce plant equipment downtime through innovative technologies. The "Samartha Sarathi" initiative brings Generative AI into plant operations, giving engineers and technicians timely, contextual knowledge to speed up equipment recovery and improve production line availability. This solution has significantly reduced downtime and increased overall availability.
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Setting new industry standards
Tata Chemicals’ Samartha Sarathi project focuses on creating opportunities to enhance technician effectiveness through reduced cognitive load, improved operational efficiency, and faster capability development. By leveraging Azure and Gen AI technologies, the solution brings an intelligent advisor to the technicians to efficiently deal with plant maintenance. Manufacturing customers can realise significant benefits from these solutions, including reduced downtime, faster training and upskilling, improved knowledge availability, and better management of production lines, enabling technicians at all experience levels to perform with greater confidence and consistency.