Mumbai, Nov 20 (IANS): Glass packaging company Piramal Glass on Tuesday announced that it has deployed Microsoft's Azure IoT platform to digitally transform its manufacturing operations.

Piramal Glass has implemented the solution, titled "Real-Time Manufacturing Insights" (RTMI), on 46 production lines across its four plants at Kosamba and Jambusar in Gujarat, Sri Lanka and the US.

Using Azure IoT Hub, Microsoft helped Piramal Glass acquire data from sensors on production lines to identify quality parameters at each stage and get insights on line efficiencies in real-time.

This resulted in improved production efficiency and cost reduction up to 70 per cent as compared to a glass industry manufacturing execution system (MES).

"We are happy to have collaborated with Microsoft on our journey towards digital transformation and business critical future readiness. Combining digital technologies with precision high-quality glass manufacturing has helped us fortify our accelerated growth path," said Vijay Shah, Director-Piramal Glass and Executive Director -Piramal Enterprises Ltd.

Piramal Glass has leveraged IoT to get real-time visibility into its line manufacturing operations and to analyse production line losses at various stages.

"It is significant that Microsoft technology enabled plant operations to continue as usual during the rollout of the Azure IoT solution, ensuring no disruption to the core manufacturing and deep integration with critical business processes," noted Sashi Sreedharan, Managing Director, Microsoft India.

To facilitate this transformation, Precimetrix -- a Microsoft partner -- brought in its Plant Monitoring System hosted on Microsoft Azure.

Piramal Glass is the largest specialty glass player in Asia and has been the fastest growing glass company in the world for over a decade.

According to Microsoft, IoT today is helping businesses improve operational efficiency and generate new business models from their existing assets and equipment.