Steel and Metal Production
Unexpected shutdowns are costly and very demanding for the workforce involved. Our Virtual Engineers help you to make your metal processing critical assets smart in order to increase the availability.
Today most often technical data sheets coupled with the knowledge of a number of unique experienced individuals are used to determine when maintenance is required for an asset. Product quality only becomes an issue when customers start complaining. Repairs are done when it's already far too late. All of this puts tremendous strain on the people responsible for the production and maintenance, while it can be avoided, quite easily.
The only way to validate the actual health of crucial assets, and predict upcoming issues, is by having a continuous look at a broad data set and adding a specific multi-aspect monitoring setup consisting of different sensor types. This combined with an automated smart follow-up of the behaviour of critical components and the general state-of-health of the asset based on the collected data.
Zensor offers a range of ready-made products for monitoring specific assets: Rolling bridges or Overhead Cranes, Electric Arc Furnaces (EAF), Hot Rolling Mills, Conveyors, AOD Converters, BOF, Continuous Caster turrets as well as Continuous Casting lines, Cold Rolling lines, including tensioners and welding stations, Cooling water pumps and de-scalers, ...
“The insights generated give us peace of mind regarding the overall status of the overhead crane. Prioritising, quantifying and investigating maintenance tasks became easier, which in the long run, will result in the avoidance of unexpected shutdowns."
Some of our clients
Asset-specific Brochures:
"Predictive Maintenance is a buzzword. We on the other hand offer real solutions to solve real problems, including context and helping you to prevent them from happening ever again."
We understand the problems you face
Catch them before they cause greater damage!
Standstills
Missing production targets due to equipment failure has a serious impact on your business and causes economic loss, delayed deliveries and demotivation among employees.Product quality
Not just the quality of the output but quality of the machinery - if your machine is deforming it will influence the quality of your output, causing greater bad yield.Yield optimisation
The faster the asset produces perfect output one after another, the less material has to be thrown away. A smart sensor set helps in setting the optimal set point to begin with and to rapidly reach the perfect conditions for each day.Availability
Increase the availability of your asset by only performing repairs when necessary.Unknown root-cause
Use the right data to discover where and how the problem came from.Operational statistics
When continuously tracking currents or vibrations smart algorithms can determine automatically how long the asset operates under a certain condition. Live statistics give you insights into how optimally the asset is used.A typical steel plant process
Below a flow chart of a typical (integrated) steel plant or steel mill is depicted. It contains both process streams, bith the scrap-based as well as the ore-based route. In the future this flow chart will undergo massive changes, as for example DRI-based routed will replace the Blast Furnace process and Electric Arc Furnaces and also Induction ovens will take up the majority of the heavy lifting: the actual melting. Using the button below the chart a .pdf version of this chart can be downloaded.
Solutions for operational improvement:
Learn more about our approach
Performance
Based on the data collected and machine-learning based methods for determining the operational condition the performance is calculated.
Quality
Coupling to existing databases or using human input fields the product quality is linked to operational process parameters.
Warnings
Whenever values start to deviate, or data streams stop, warnings are sent. This avoids 'black holes' in the insights of the production line or assets.
Increase availability
Have a continuous idea of availability, automatically as the platform combines different input streams and contextual information.
Operational statistics
Often these statistics are available but not visible or known to the relevant stakeholders.Health status
Having a real-time overview of your gantry cranes health status is vital to improving its overall efficiency on site. Alerting
Reacting to particular events on your gantry crane is a lot more efficient and effective if you know what has, or is about to happenOur Experiences
Use case:Metallo
Belgium
We're helping Metallo monitor the structural integrity of their critical overhead cranes. Read more in the case study.
Blog post:Save on operating costs while becoming smarter
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Blog post:How to be smart with data?
For a ‘smart’ follow-up of machines it is important not to rely on 1 source of truth. In reality this means that, in order to properly assess and predict the efficiency of operations and state-of-health of a machine, combinations are essential...
One pager:Critical asset
Gantry Crane
Remote & continuous, multi-parameter health follow-up of your gantry crane.
We understand your problems and we're here to help.
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Download:
Success Case
A recent success case where our continuous monitoring of an EAF resulted in considerable cost savings
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Last week Zensor attended the Hüttentag in Essen. During this annual event the entire German steel industry meets up to discuss the state of affairs and exchange ideas about upcoming developments and changes...
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Blog post:Making Conveyors Smart
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The main job of the Plant Manager is to keep the site running smoothly, whilst producing as many goods as efficiently as possible and using the resources provided..
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