In future, the expanded system will also be used for the condition monitoring of two new continuous galvanizing lines supplied by Primetals. Since 2017, the CMS has been monitoring an existing galvanizing line, a continuous annealing line and a coupled tandem pickling line in cold rolling mill no. 2, as well as a hot strip mill. The CMS is intended to increase the availability of the plant, reduce maintenance costs, help to optimize production planning, and provide a consistently high product quality. With cross-plant condition monitoring, Tangshan is taking an important step towards Industry 4.0 and to technological leadership in the field of predictive maintenance. The expanded CMS is scheduled to come into operation at the end of 2018.
The CMS monitors not only the mechanical equipment but also the mechatronic systems and technological controls, process models and third-party systems. For the expansion of the condition monitoring system, Primetals will supply sensor packages, servers and special software packages. These include over a hundred permanently installed and mobile packages to measure and analyze vibrations, packages for fast connections to local CPUs, and packages for monitoring the roller tables and data from the basic automation (Level 1). The collected data is available centrally in a maintenance center, at operator stations or for remote access. An interface to the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system for machine data synchronization, work orders and feedback from maintenance activities was also implemented.
Tangshan Iron and Steel is part of the HBIS Group Co., Ltd., China´s largest steel producer with an annual production of over 46 million metric t in 2016. The Tangshan production site has been in operation for over 70 years. In recent years, Primetals has supplied an AOD converter, a vacuum decarburization plant and a continuous galvanizing line to Tangshan, and also coupled the tandem cold rolling mill to the existing pickling line.
_{(Source: Primetals Technologies, Limited)}