Connecting and tracking all moving objects
“The recent collaboration with ABB on technology to optimize the performance of the melt shop is an industry first, and has provided outstanding results,” said Ashish Chandra, Plant Head – Dolvi, Salav and Anjar Works, JSW Steel Ltd. “The melt shop includes a lot of material movement and on time delivery of ladles full of molten metal at the right temperature is key for the efficiency of any steel melt shop. That is why we wanted to reduce manual coordination of the ladles and enable real-time visibility to track them at all processing stations of the melt shop.”
Automatic tracking and scheduling increases personnel safety as they are removed from the production area during crane and ladle movements.
ABB began its work by digitally connecting all moving objects in the melt shop, be it ladles, cranes or transfer cars using sensors such as laser positioning, radar positioning and even image processing.
Once the systems were operational and data flows were mapped it was possible to integrate information from the various systems to visualize ladles and heat movements in real time. This allowed ABB and JSW Steel to develop software enabling, for example, automatic and optimal scheduling of cranes which reduce delays and waiting times.
“The ladle tracking system provides valuable support to people on the ground, working in the plant, to effectively monitor and track all steel ladles,” said Sanjay Gurme, Vice President, Steel & Mills, SIP and Cokemaking, JSW Steel Ltd, Dolvi Works.
JSW Steel and ABB are also collaborating to use video analytics to control the size and quality of pellets.
“At ABB, we believe that all aspects of operations can be improved with advanced industrial software solutions, and with our digital consultancy, domain expertise and cyber secure digital solutions, we hope to achieve great things together with JSW Steel,” said, Tarun Mathur.
A complete range of products, services and end-to-end solutions that improve productivity, quality, safety and cost-efficiency in iron, steel, aluminium and other metals production processes are available through ABB. Across the whole metals value chain, ABB demonstrates a commitment to optimize operations with high performance products, automation, electrification and digital solutions.