Ahmedabad: With most of the brick manufacturing and ceramic units in Kutch and Morbi beginning to automate their processes and importing machines from Europe, the Gujarat Technological University (GTU) has kick-started its Innovation Sankuls in the region, with almost 40 students already frequenting several industries.

Uday Chhaya, associate professor of Industrial

Engineering at Lukhdirji Engineering College, Morbi, said most of the larger industries from the 300-plus units in the ceramic cluster have already begun using machines from Germany, Italy or Spain.

The GTU initiative is based on a reasoning that has emerged from prior research on the Indian ceramic and bricks industry. “We found that in India as a whole, the brick manufacturing industry is worth US $140 billion annually. On the other hand, it burns 24 million tonnes of coal and emits 42 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, a major greenhouse gas. Besides, the industry degrades 350 million tonnes of top...

soil annually,” said Hiranmay Mahanta, who co-ordinates the Innovation Sankul programme.

Binu Bhaskar Pillai, Innovation Sankul’s deputy co-chair in Kutch who has a construction company, said the 28-odd large brick manufacturers there are already giving purchase orders for machines from European companies. “The smaller brick manufacturers, about 40 to 50 of them, still use the manual process and directly sell non-standard bricks to traders and small builders. But larger firms that make ISI standard bricks have placed or are in the process of placing orders,” he said.

The automation is partly the consequence of shortage of labour in Kutch, as the number of labourers coming from other states has gone down. He said the GTU initiative in Kutch is timely since the transition from manual to automation is about to begin, and also because the engineering education is theory based and pass-outs have little industry experience (part of Sankul’s initiative would be...

to get students to work with industries to solve industry defined problems, or IDPs).

The labour crisis is less acute in Morbi’s ceramic cluster since most are from the area itself, said Chhaya, but companies are automating to increase competitiveness, he added.

But automation brings with it it’s own challenges, for example, workers there would need to feed the right formulations of raw materials that are to be fed into the machines. “Thirty-nine of our students have already began working on IDPs concerning mainly this. They are trained in chemistry and electronics, so they are quite capable of coming up with formulations that would enhance the durability and strength of the tiles and refectory bricks the industries make,” Chhaya said....