The mine is located in a remote part of northern Australia, with a harsh tropical savanna climate. Under these tough conditions, reliable control system performance is essential, and is why the customer chose the ABB Harmony Distributed Control System to control their processes. To ensure that this important control investment continued to perform as planned, managers asked ABB to provide a diagnostic service that would identify any potential system issues that could be addressed in order to minimize process disruptions and extend asset life.
Challenge
-
Analyze ABB Harmony Distributed Control System performance to identify issues that could be mitigated to ensure continuous production
-
Perform this analysis in less than one week
-
Upgrade the Harmony system software
-
Train customer personnel to use the Harmony system more effectively
This mining company chose a Harmony Performance Fingerprint service to identify system issues that could cause hardware failure, and as a result interrupt production. The Fingerprint is a cost-effective, non-invasive service that provides diagnostics, key findings and recommendations in less than a week.
The ABB Harmony Performance Fingerprint audits and analyzes Harmony control systems to find issues that may impede performance.The Fingerprint benchmarks control system performance and parameters, and compares them to peak operating conditions. After identifying optimum system operation, ABB recommends improvements.
Reliability is crucial at this hard-to-reach customer’s location, where local temperatures average 30 °C (86 °F) year round, and frequent heavy downpours present a challenge for optimum performance of all physical assets.
At this bauxite mining operation, the raw material extracted is screened and washed at one of the site’s two processing plants before being transported off-site to be refined. The customer used the Harmony Performance Fingerprint to identify hardware issues that could disrupt this process.
The ABB Service team prepared thoroughly before arriving at the location. After learning that additional hardware would be needed to connect to the site’s Harmony system, they brought the necessary hardware with them. This ensured fast communication with the existing Harmony system, so ABB could complete the Fingerprint quickly and accurately.
ABB collected and analyzed data, then presented findings and recommendations in less than one week, including travel to and from the site. ABB also conducted training to help personnel learn to use the Harmony control system more effectively.