Application cases of smart factory solutions in the steel industry

1. Solution Background

With the continuous acceleration of informatization and the vigorous development of 5G technology, the traditional steel industry has also been greatly impacted. This solution helps a steel industry enterprise build a smart factory, improves the enterprise's competitiveness in the market, and realizes a digital twin platform. This solution is based on 5G network, combined with MEC edge cloud technology, and carries out remote monitoring, intelligent detection and edge control applications based on edge computing technology through JENET 5G industrial gateway.

2. Analysis of solution requirements

The system currently used by Zhejiang Jiuli Special Materials Technology Co., Ltd. is weak and the shortcomings are obvious. In order to further improve the management level and intelligent manufacturing ability of the enterprise, improve the efficiency of the enterprise, and improve the quality of products, it is necessary to cooperate with Jiuli Group to build a 5G+ industrial product. A smart factory with networking + cloud-edge integration. According to the above requirements, the problems to be solved by this solution are as follows:

(1) Due to the weak support and obvious shortcomings of the information platform system currently used by the enterprise, the enterprise needs to carry out digital transformation to realize the status monitoring of the underlying equipment and ensure the production progress;

(2) Since some equipment PLCs of the enterprise have Ethernet interfaces, some equipment PLCs have special communication interfaces, some old equipments do not have communication interfaces, and the original PLCs have been out of the factory for a long time, and the PLCs are encrypted or have no PLC controllers, resulting in increased digitization difficulties. Big;

(3) According to the internal production and operation plan of the enterprise, the replacement of new equipment is expensive and will seriously affect the production progress;

(4) According to the on-site investigation of the enterprise industry, the current equipment is still managed discretely, and operators of various equipment are required to operate on-site. The lack of coordination and networking between equipment makes it difficult to improve production efficiency;

(5) Due to the scattered locations of on-site equipment, the scattered production sites, and the different models of various equipment in the production line, the industrial protocols are also inconsistent, and it is difficult to implement wired networking, and it is impossible to achieve the requirements of flexible manufacturing;

3. Solution System Diagram

The platform construction application of this project is an enterprise IOT platform, which provides equipment basic data for the upper-layer business application systems, and realizes the connection of the enterprise from the DCS layer - the production execution layer - the data decision layer, so as to achieve the transparency of the manufacturing process, agile production response, and departmental Collaborative real-time management.

• System functions

➢Support PC-side management of the system

➢Communication protocol: support access to various mainstream protocols

➢Monitor the large screen: Through the monitoring of the large screen 24 hours a day, the operation status of each equipment in the factory and the production efficiency of each equipment are continuously monitored.

➢Device management: support device addition, configuration and establishment of device files

➢Fault alarm: Support equipment fault alarm. When the equipment fails, the PLC will transmit the point change to the platform, and the platform will notify the corresponding person in charge by telephone or other means.

➢ Data collection: support AB, Siemens and other types of PLC data collection, transmit the point information in the PLC to the database in 5G mode, and transmit the data in the database to the digital platform

➢ Log record: support the recording of historical data, historical alarm information, historical equipment online and offline and other data information of the device

➢User management: support user classification and role-based management in the system;

• Goals achieved

➢The 5G gateway has a full industrial-grade hardware design, which can effectively solve the interference problem of equipment data acquisition in various harsh environments;

➢Through the 5G gateway to adapt to a variety of different protocol types of PLCs, the data of each PLC can be collected and uploaded to the control platform;

➢Real-time data transmission through the 5G wireless network, the control platform can remotely monitor the operating status of the equipment, without the need for on-site inspections;

➢Realize early warning of equipment failure, when equipment failure occurs, feedback to mechanic personnel for quick response and maintenance;

➢Through remote monitoring, it saves time for troubleshooting and improves production efficiency.

• System Features

➢The 5G+edge cloud enterprise solution deeply integrates 5G technology with AI, edge computing, cloud computing, big data, edge computing and other technologies to form a reproducible, highly applicable, and valuable smart steel plant solution.

➢Accurate fault location, through 5G high-definition video, once an abnormality is found, remote expert diagnosis will be started immediately, combined with the operator wearing AR glasses and integrated helmet to enter the factory for inspection, timely diagnosis and troubleshooting

➢ The 5G+ motor full life cycle management and control system developed based on 5G capabilities uploads motor operation data to the cloud platform through the 5G gateway to judge and predict motor failures, changing the processing of motor failures from post-event remediation to pre-event prevention, improving equipment operation efficiency.