Army Corps of EME's 'Project Beehive' to be up and running by Oct 2020: DG

Project Beehive -- helmed by Army's Corps of Electronics and Mechanical Engineers (EME) -- that seeks to achieve greater automation of the corps and connect all its workshops onto an integrated smart network endowed with real-time data analytics capabilities is expected to be up and running by October next year, its director general has said.

The automated platform will make the information on Army equipment available in a hierarchical fashion at the click of a button, Director General of Electronics and Mechanical Engineering, Lt Gen Anil Kapoor, said.

"Automation of the corps will give us a lot of advantage. Currently, under WASP (Workshop Honeybees), workshops have been automated. And, as part of Project Beehive, these WASPs or workshops would then sit on a centralised 'beehive' a massive integrated network in Delhi, from which we would draw honey (data), he said.

The Corps of EME is an arms and service branch of the Army and its various roles include repair of military equipment of various kinds and maintenance of their operational fitness. On October 15, it will observe its 77th Corps Day.

Asked about the status of the Project Beehive, Kapoor said, The work on WASPs have already been going on for a year now. We will be working module by module on the overall framework. And, the 'Beehive' is expected to be up and running by next October.

There are about 2,000 Army workshops across the country and each of those will be connected to the centralised data network having eight echelons, he said.

This project began with a proof of concept, on which we have worked. Then the alpha or beta level testing comes following which it will be sent to Army Cyber Group for cyber clearance ,and once we have that go-ahead, it will move towards an army data centre (ADC). And, then we will further try to scale it up once we have achieved it, the DG said.

Kapoor, who has a distinguished military career spanning over 37 years, said, the Army has partnered with Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) and team of officers along with hand-picked coders are working on the project.

The centralised network would allow us to access data about any equipment we have across the country in real-time, and it would also have the capability to analyse that data, and say tell about which equipment is due for maintenance, so it will allow data mining, he said.

Asked if artificial intelligence would be part of the data analytics, Kapoor said, AI is something that perhaps will come into play in the longer run.

On the volume of equipment, Kapoor said, there are about 2,000 different types and 30 lakh in depth.

On the GOCO (Government Owned Contractor Operated) model for the Army base workshops, he said, process is in final stages to bring a consultant on board.

Last year, the Corps had recovered an advanced light helicopter (ALH) in high-altitude Siachen glacier terrain after the chopper had turned over with its rotor broken.