Siempelkamp Giesserei GmbH, together with its partners ABP Induction Systems GmbH and Zorc Technology GmbH, has completed the first complete digitalization of a melting plant in Germany. This is a reaction to the current challenges on the market: skyrocketing energy prices, the trend of decarbonisation and the ongoing topic of demographic change.

Three step-model

• The project was started with engineering and preparation. This involved the analysis of the data structure, the provision of data models and the connection of the equipment.
• The second step was deployment and testing. This included installing the ABP Edge Gateway, implementing the apps, and verifying data collection and communication.
• Step three then included the actual release and approval, including user training and defining the next steps.

By the beginning of June 2021, the three partners had contractually committed to the redesign of the melting furnace and preparations for implementation were underway by the end of 2021. With the scheduled shutdown of the furnaces at the end of 2021, the final installation was made for a fully digitalized resumption of operation from January 2022.

Since then, regular optimization loops have been scheduled in the digitalized regular operation. Now the Krefeld facility is starting up fully digitalized.

Towards a digital melting plant

A central component of successful digitalization is the ability to allocate all production data.

Wolfgang Braungart from ZORC Technology GmbH explains:

„For this, you need a workflow management in order to be able to describe something like this in a business process. We use our own language for this – the „Business Process Model Notation“. The individual steps of the production process are represented graphically and broken down into individual steps by the software.

In summary, this means: All data is collected and evaluated, is available merged to the business model, and the individual employee is focused only on their task. So what the workflow management system has going for it is that the employee at the individual workstations only ever gets information on his screen or tablet about exactly his tasks that are relevant to him.”

How to erect a ‘production tree’

For the control of the software one needs flow organization diagrams. They show how work processes are structured. What is needed are assigned data records from which production trees can be derived.

A production tree may look like this: Material is collected from the various bunkers in the charging chute and then fed into the furnace. After melting, a spectrometer sample and thermal analysis is performed. Based on the information collected, conclusions can be drawn as to whether material quantities need to be corrected via
the furnace stage, manganese for example.

Finally, a production tree is created that contains all the relevant information. The branches are formed by all raw materials and all measured values, all energy values and times. Hence, they reflect as a process what is ultimately produced. The finished casting as the trunk of the tree.

The roots of the production tree are then figuratively supplied by the quality department, containing data on tensile strength results, microstructure, dimension and surface; basically everything the customer wants to receive in the final documentation.

Digitalization as a necessary development step

At Siempelkamp, all processes now converge centrally in one system:

The trick is to bring the individual data together in such a way that there is convergent data that comes from the most diverse areas and subsystems in order to be able to interpret and use it,“ says Dr. Georg Geier from Siempelkamp.

This linkage had not been trivial:

„We work in grown structures with very different characteristics, hardware and software architectures, and this has to be integrated. This is where the partners ABP and ZORC come into play – we wouldn‘t be able to do it without them. We need them at our side, because I am certain: unless we digitalize our processes and business models, we won‘t be able to generate an acceptable ROI in the future,“ says Dr. Georg Geier