Paper Title
MARRYING ‘IT’ WITH ‘OT’ IN COAL POWER PLANTS: EXPERIENCE, CHALLENGES & A FRAMEWORK TO OVERCOME THE CHALLENGES.

Abstract
Abstract - Digitalization has abundant possibilities to help improve safety, efficiency, productivity, security, and sustainability in a coal fired thermal power plant. Despite a plethora of imminent benefits, the marriage between IT and OT has not been so strong as expected in thermal power sector, especially in India. This could be due to the tug of war between several pull and push factors. This paper presents a study on the various factors that pull the IT-OT alignment and deployment off track. These factors are categorized in 6buckets for analysis and gaining actionable insights viz., strategy, operational, regulatory, technical, innovation and economic considerations. A framework is also suggested to beat the hurdles and attain a fruitful IT-OT deployment in power plants. Keywords - Analytics, Digitization, Digitalization, Digital transformation, Real Digital Twin, Drones, APM, EAM, Automation, Visualization, PADO, AI, IoT, ML.