Bharat Electronics Limited - Cost Reduction - Efficiency Improvement

Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) is a state-owned electronics company with about nine factories.

It is owned by the Indian Government & primarily manufactures advanced electronic products for the Defence. BEL is one of the eight PSUs under Ministry of Defence, Government Of India. It has earned the government's Navratna status.


BEL designs, develops and manufactures products in the fields of:

Electronic Voting Machines
Radars
BEL Weapon Locating Radar
BEL Battle Field Surveillance Radar
Indian Doppler Radar
Samyukta Electronic Warfare System
Central Acquisition Radar (3D-CAR)
Reporter Radar
Telecommunications
Sound and Vision Broadcasting
Opto-electronics
Information Technology
Semiconductors
Missiles
Akash (missile)
Sonars
Composite Communication System (CCS)
Fire-control system
Radar
Electronic Warfare Systems
Samyukta Electronic Warfare System
Simulators
Tank electronics
Combined day sight for Arjun MBT
Defence Communications
Data Link II communications system for the Indian Navy’s P-8I
Combat Management system for Indian Navy
Solar systems
Naval systems
ADC&RS
IACCS
A low-cost tablet pc being used in Socio-Economic Caste Census 2011
Biometrics Capturing for Nation Population Register.
Encrypters for Ministry of Home Affairs
IFF(Identify Friend or Foe) secondary Radar



Locations

Units of Bharat Electronics Limited are in the following cities and towns

Bangalore (Corporate Head Office)
Chennai, Tamilnadu
Panchkula (Haryana)
Kotdwara, (UttaraKhand)
Ghaziabad, (Uttar Pradesh)
Pune
Hyderabad
Navi Mumbai
Machilipatnam



Cost Reduction Project by a Summer Intern

1) Servo Controller Tester


Developing a low cost, efficient and reliable system for testing “Servo Motor Controllers (SMC)” developed by BEL. The project simulated the antenna’s rotation based on the SMC’s power and control output.
the project  focused on the Doppler Weather Radar's (DWR) Servo Motor Controller (SMC).
The system setup description
.
It has a custom CPU core developed on a Virtex-4 FPGA, acting as the main processing element of the SMC.
This FPGA receives control signals from a radar controller via a LAN setup.
The antenna setup consists of a 4 ton S-Band antenna, 2 Servo motors to rotate the antenna in both elevation and azimuth positions, a rotary encoder to relay back the current position of the antenna to the SMC.
Once the rotation positions are received from the Radar Controller, the FPGA then controls an Azimuth amplifier and a Elevation amplifier which in turn drives an Isolation amplifier with a 3 Phase, 70KV AC output.
The power output of the isolation amplifier is then fed to the servo motor of the antenna which makes it rotate proportionately.
The SMC reads the current position of the encoder via a clock and data line. Clock lines and data lines are of RS485 to enable long distance noiseless transmission.
Now, to test a Servo Controller, BEL had to install the antenna setup which is a 4 ton S-Band antenna, build the "Redome" and then perform the testing. This costs BEL nearly INR 2,500,000 ($50,000) and nearly 3 months of labor to install the setup.

Project aimed at reducing the complexity involved in testing the SMC by developing a simulator of the antenna. This development involved interfacing with the SMC's ASIC core and the output power to the Servo Motor.

The design had an Analog Front End (AFE) and the MSP430 micro controller. The AFE interfaced the MSP to the Isolation Amplifier Output which usually drives the Servo Motor, and also to a reference clock (again differential) and a differential data transmission unit, all of which are in RS-485 standards and had to be reduced to the 3.3V logic of the MSP controller.

It is currently being used by BEL to test their Servo Motor Controllers.

2) A Universal antenna simulator with on-board programming support for ASIC adaptability

It is an extension of my project “Servo Controller Tester”.
BEL develops 2 versions of Doppler Weather Radars (DWR)’s, the C-Band and the S-Band radars. The SMC for each is different and so is the interface b/w the SMC and antenna.
This project allows the testing equipment to be reprogrammed with minor modification in the clock and counter sequence of the MSP430 controller for testing any version of the SMC. Since the interface unit to the antenna remains unchanged, there is no need for any modifications in the Analog Front End of the new  system.
It “adapts” to the ASIC used in the SMC.

The cost of testing using new system Rs. 1600 instead of the cost of old system Rs. 25,00,000.

http://nagaraja.wikidot.com/bharat-electronics-1

Cost reduction efforts were due to design change, indigenization, and alternative sources of procurement.

During the period 2007-08 to 2009-10 the company achieved cost reduction of 398.23 cr. which was only  2.72 percent of total value of production.

Out of that Rs. 155.80 cr was due to negotiations with vendors.

Government of India Audit Report April 2011
http://saiindia.gov.in/english/home/Our_Products/Audit_report/Government_Wise/union_audit/recent_reports/union_performance/2011_2012/Commercial/Report_No_4/chap5.pdf




26 October 2013
Rani Vergis, GM (finance)/BEL-Bangalore
Rani Vergis joined BEL-Ghaziabad in September 1985 after completing B.Com (Hons) from Delhi University and Chartered Accountancy. In a span of 24 years, she worked in all areas of finance at BEL-Ghaziabad. She served as Finance Head of Ghaziabad Unit and Military Radars and Military Communications SBUs of BEL-Bangalore before being transferred to BEL’s Corporate Office. She won the BEL Executive Excellence Award in the year 2002-03. She has also served as Secretary and later as Chairman of the BEL Provident Fund Trust (Northern Units) and has been a member of the Productivity Steering Committee of BEL-Bangalore and Corporate Steering Committee for cost reduction in BEL.


BEL Project report

http://www.slideshare.net/vishalkumargupta/bel-project-report