TCS division to 'usefully' transform industrial waste
The Financial Express — December 13, 2006

A major initiative is underway at the Tata Research Development and Design Centre (TRDDC) to transform industrial waste into useful products. TRDDC has succeeded in converting waste material into alinite cement that has properties closely matching those of conventional portland cement. "The mineral processing industry, iron and steel industry and aluminium produce a lot of waste material that contains toxic materials which cannot be used. This can however, be converted into alinite cement that could used on roads," Mathai Joseph, executive director, TRDDC said.

Joseph said TRDDC had run some pilots in Tata Steel and was working with metal industries. Japan and Korea are the only nations that have a strong interest in this area. Celebrating 25 years of existence, TRDDC, a division of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has charted out focus areas in software and process engineering that include data masking tools, solutions for system complexity management, fraud detection applications, information extraction tools and nano-materials over the next three years. "2020 is a nice time to think about. The way forward is to speculate and look forward and not look back," Joseph said.

TRDDC has begun pilots with clients on its data-masking tool, Masketeer. The tool finds applications in financial institutions, healthcare and public information, areas. The fraud detection tools help stock exchanges and public utilities identify patterns of potential misuse and the information extraction tool helps identify trends from seemingly unconnected data. Joseph said managing large Information Technology (IT) plants with over 100,000 desktops and 5000 servers was a complex task. TRDDC has developed a system complexity management that assesses the potential bottlenecks in operations reducing application loads by at least 60 per cent.

"This kind of forecasting service will be offered as an consulting service by TCS aspart of its infrastructure management service," he said. In process engineering, the division is working on nano industrial coatings that would be self-cleaning. These kind of materials could find applications in the construction industry where such coats could be used on buildings, he explained.