Since its inception, steel manufacturing has not undergone much change. New technology has improved productivity and reliability, but steel manufacturers still face operational challenges. This document talks about the challenges faced in the steel industry around aspects like safety, quality, supply chain, production and maintenance. Also how digital plays a pivotal role in addressing the challenges, supported by some recent use-cases and our approach towards digital transformation by combining business approaches and technology.

Digital Solutions to Address Operational Challenges in Steel Manufacturing

E-B OOK

Gokul Eswaran, Manager, Hitachi Vantara

Madhu Juvvanapudi, Manager, Hitachi Vantara

Niket Malpani, Senior Consultant, Hitachi Vantara

Dev Ramchandani, Senior Director, Hitachi Vantara

Sudhanshu Rometra, Senior Consultant, Hitachi Vantara

Siva Viswanathan, Senior Consultant, Hitachi Vantara

Leveraging Digital in Steel Manufacturing Operations

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Introduction Modern steel making began in late 1850s and over-time, due to immense use of steel, it has become the backbone of any economy in the world, with global crude steel production and consumption reaching figures as high as 1,869 Mt and 1,765 Mt respectively in 2019.

The per capita steel intensity of the world, which stands at 229.3 Kg per capita, highlights the importance of the steel sector across the globe. Furthermore, steel consumption of high GDP per capita countries, is higher, indicating a correlation between GDP and steel consumption of a country.

The steel industry has witnessed process as well as digital evolution across its value chain, with more efficient furnaces enhancing productivity and the incorporation of new technologies and automation solutions. However, the evolution has been limited to certain sub-processes across of the value chain and primarily by the leading steel players of the world.

As this digital adoption is not an industry-wide practice, these manufactures (primary and secondary) still witness operational, supply chain, quality and maintenance challenges leading to high operational costs, affecting the bottom line.

of the total global finished

steel production. Growth in

these two sectors is going to

continue to drive a positive

steel demand.

The Construction & Infrastructure sector, together with Automotive, consume more than

65%

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Digital Evolution Across the Value ChainOver the years the steel industry has adopted new and innovative technologies to help with every stage of the production process. Depending on the level of digital maturity and the capabilities of the organization to support, the solutions have been adopted and are showing value in production plants around the world.

Digital Evolution& Automation

Raw Materials

Iron Making

Steel Making& Casting

Rolling &Finishing

- Real time productivity & utilisation monitoring system.

- Remote Monitoring solutions Intelligent Transport Control System

- Worker Safety and Traceability Solutions

- Vision based furnace monitoring system

- Process and Advanced Control Systems.

- Presence of Cyber Physical Systems and Digital Twins

- Predictive Quality Analytics

- Coke Oven Scheduling and Heat Monitoring

- Dynamic production scheduling and conditional monitoring

- Use of MES and HMIs, advanced control systems

- RCM solutions

- Slag Monitoring and Detection Systems

- Casting Diagnostics

- Torpedo Ladle Management system

- Online surface quality assessment and width measurement

- Integrated data analytics to identify impact of melt-shop parameters and alloy addition on casting defects

- APC solutions for reheating furnaces and quality control

- Dehole-hole detection

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Challenges in Steel ManufacturingStages of the steel making process and typical problems encountered.

Steel Making

Casting

Rolling/Finishing

Iron Making

Mining/Dispatch

Steel Making

Casting

Rolling/Finishing

Asset Management: - Frequent breakdowns in SMS overhead cranes -Degradation of refractory lining in EAF and LRFOperations:- Determining optimal arcing time in furnace based on charge mix- Determining optimal oxygen quantity used in EAF- Determining optimal treatment time duration and ferro alloys quantity in LRFQuality:- Improper slag separation in furnace leading to quality and yield issues

Asset Management: - Mold issues leading to yield and rejectsOperations:- Throughput variation due to variation in casting speed Metal breakout due to high casting speed Quality:- Deviation in dimensions leading to issues in downstream operations- Scrap generation due to surface defects

Asset Management: - Frequent breakdowns in rolling stationsOperations:- Shutdowns and breakdowns due to misrolls- Low capacity utilization of re-heating furnaceQuality:- Scrap generation due to surface defects- Yield loss due to improper cutting at finishing station

Mining/Dispatch

Iron Making

Asset Management: - Frequent breakdowns and inefficient maintenance of Heavy Earth Moving MachinesOperations:- Sub-optimal use of mining and ore refining equipmentSupply Chain:- Long TAT for trucks due to manual documentation processes- Locating RM/FG in the yard as per source/ order is time consuming- Visibility of customer orders in the system

Asset Management: - Breakdowns in blast furnace e.g due to tuyere blockageOperations:- Variation in specific energy consumption in DRI, BF, Sinter and Coke oven - Air loss due to snort valve operation in blast furnace- Blast furnace hanging due to charge distribution issuesQuality:- Variation in output quality due to incoming materials

Fatalities/mishaps/near misses due to accidental access to critical areas

Safety- Hazards and fatalities due to low compliance of PPEInventory Management:- Visibility of spare parts in the system

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Leveraging Hitachi Digital Solutions in Steel Manufacturing

Safety:

Quality:

Supply

Chain:

● A safe working environment not only boosts morale, but also increases productivity on the shop floor. Under the extreme conditions of steel manufacturing, safety compliance is of paramount importance.

● Digital tools such as real-time image and video processing can help in ensuring PPE compli-ance and machine safety.

● Digitized 5S compliance can also ensure better shop floor management.

● Advanced data analytical tools and image & video analysis techniques can address quality challenges in steel manufacturing and increase the yield and reduce energy losses by provid-ing better measurement through visualization and better control of quality parameters.

● Output quality parameters can be better pre-dicted and controlled by using past production and quality data with predictive and prescrip-tive analytic tools.

● Challenges of slag separation in Electric Arc Furnace (EAF), dimension measurement and surface defect measurement in semi-fin-ished and finished products can be mitigated through better visualization using advance image and video processing tools.

● Data integration and visualization tools can be used to strengthen the complex steel value chain by integrating the processes within the company and the processes involving external stakeholders e.g. suppliers and customers.

● Visibility of spare parts inventory, RM/ FG inventory can be improved using tracking and tracing tools thereby leading to better response time during shutdowns or breakdowns and better control over order lead-time.

● Truck TAT can be improved through connected operations and by converting manual pro-cesses into a digital format.

Digital Health & Safety Offering:● Our safety offering leverages live video feeds

to analyze the environment and thus creates alerts in case of any safety non-compliance. The tool also brings out compliance in Lock-out, Tag-out (LOTO), 5S and Work Permits.

Typical Benefits:● Reduction in Lost Time Injury Frequency Rate

(LTIFR).● Reduction in near miss incidents.

Digital Quality:● Our quality offering provides predictive insights

on quality control and assurance through real-time process parameters analysis and image and video analytics that leverage artificial intel-ligence techniques.

Typical Benefits● Yield improvement.● Throughput improvement.

Supply Chain Optimization:● Our supply chain optimization solution leverages the

power of digital for recreating the supply chain in dig-ital format with business rules and connectivity to key systems. This can help to achieve better control over the supply chain.

Typical Benefits:● Reduction in time locating spare parts.● Optimized lead times.● Optimized TAT.

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Operations:

Maintenance:

● With advancement in sensor technology and data capture and processing mechanisms, long standing challenges in operations can be addressed more effectively than ever. With its application in the extreme processes of steel manufacturing, most operations parameters can be captured and optimized to increase operational efficiency.

● Optimization of arcing time in EAF, reduc-ing fluctuations in energy consumption and increasing capacity utilization for reheating furnaces can all be achieved by advanced process parameter optimization models which compute large volumes of process data in real-time to come up with ideal operating setpoints.

● Digital Twins can help create simulations of the process where trial runs can be done before taking actions in the real process.

● Advance imaging and video capturing tech-niques can help visualize the process inside the furnace for better control e.g. charging distribution in the blast furnace and blockages inside tuyeres.

● Extreme environmental conditions in steel manufacturing can increase machine break-downs, leading to loss of availability and production. Data captured from machines can be used to assess the condition of equipment and create an efficient maintenance schedule.

● Predictive analytic tools, when loaded with real-time data from sensors and failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) in digital form, can help predict failures in advance and thus help maintenance teams schedule shutdowns and be more effective in preventative maintenance (PM) activities.

● Prescriptive analytics tools using self-learn-ing algorithms and predictive analytics help increase meantime between failure (MTBF). As a result, systems reliability and overall equip-ment effectiveness (OEE) improves.

Operations Optimization:● Our operations optimization solution has

capabilities in process optimization & simu-lation, Digital Twins, advanced imaging and video analytics. These technologies can be applied to achieve very positive results.

Typical Benefits:● Reduction in Tap-to-Tap time.● Reduction in energy consumption.● Increases in throughput.● Optimized cost of alloying elements.

Digital Maintenance:● Our digital maintenance offering uses descrip-

tive, predictive and prescriptive analytics to assess, predict and provide insights on asset condition. This can help prolong the life of machines, predict failures and implement a reliability-based maintenance practice.

Typical Benefits:● Increase in MTBF and reduction of mean time

to repair (MTTR).● OEE improvement.● Throughput.

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Use Cases

Challenge: Telescopicity, a phenomenon that occurs due to improper wrapping of a coil, gives uneven sidewalls to the coil and causes various quality issues such as uneven edges due to uneven cooling or broken edges during handling of the coil.

Challenge: Inventory status and specific location

within the inventory of spare parts is often not

known. In case of breakdowns or unplanned

maintenance, the search for spare parts increases

downtime.

Solution: Leverage advanced data science to identify the root cause for issues. Here the data science model first captures the process data (incl. upstream data) and then uses correlation analysis to identify the root cause and suggests necessary process changes over time to prevent telescopicity.

Solution: Real-time monitoring of inventory and location of spare parts in the warehouse by RFID/ Bluetooth / QR code identification. The technology creates a database for spare part quantities and storage location thereby providing tracking of the safety stock and retrieval of spare parts for maintenance.

Rolling — Quality Improvement

Across the Value Chain — Real-time Spare Parts Visibility

Typical Benefits:● Increase in coiling speed.

● Reduction in scrap generation.

Typical Benefits:● Reduction in parts and repair material retrieval time by 20%-40%.

● Increased visibility and control over stocks.

● Reducing obsolete stock, managing safety inventory.

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Challenge: Melting time in Electric Arc Furnace (EAF) is dependent on the charge mix that is being used in the furnace and is controlled by the operator running the furnace. Previous heats are used as a reference to decide energy requirements of current heat. Thus, treatment time may not be optimal for the heat.

Challenge: Frequent breakdowns in the rolling mill are often observed in the roughing station and rolling station. Reactive approaches to these breakdowns can lead to a reduction in OEE and loss of production.

Solution: Create AI based self-learning model that uses the past data of furnace to control optimum kWh/t ratio and treatment time required. The model processes historical data & corelates it with the time and temperature requirements and predicts the optimum melting time for current heat.

Solution: Enable senor-based condition-monitoring for key stations with predictive capability to detect and maintain the machine proactively. The system captures key asset health parameters such as vibration, bearing temperature etc. and corelates it with the Failure Mode Effect Analysis (FMEA) to predict and prescribe actions for maintenance.

Steel Melting Shop — Optimization of Melting Time in Electric Arc Furnace (EAF)

Rolling — Predictive Maintenance

Typical Benefits:● Frequent breakdowns in the rolling mill are often observed in the roughing station and rolling

station. Reactive approaches to these breakdowns can lead to a reduction in OEE and loss of production.

● Treatment time reduction and throughput improvement.

Typical Benefits:● Reduction in downtime from 2% to 10%.

● OEE improvement corresponds to throughput improvement.

● Maintenance cost savings of around 5%.

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Our Consulting Led ApproachOur approach to the ‘Intelligent Manufacturing Journey’

The Steel industry needs to move into a comprehensive digital transformation program aligned with optimizing the entire manufacturing value chain. To help the Industry players step on the gas and plan an organization wide digital transformation program, Hitachi Vantara can help in defining a comprehensive value driven approach for even the most complex multi-year transformation programs.

The schematic below depicts our value-driven approach for Intelligent Manufacturing Journey, which has been adopted by manufacturers globally across a cross-section of industries.

An outcome driven, business metrics focused approach which considers not just the technology dimension, but also the people and process dimensions that will help drive sustainable change. The Steel industry needs to prove its mettle in these challenging times. Hitachi Vantara Digital Transformation Solutions are specifically geared for the steel industry & our Industry specific know-how can really help make your transformation journey a success.

PROOF OF

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IMPLEMENT AT SCALE

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Build your intelligent manufacturing (I4.0) roadmap

Intelligent Manufacturing Maturity Assessment (IMMA)

Test if the concept drives value-realization for your context

Lumada Manufacturing Insights (MFI) Solution Cores

Adopt digital �rst approach and accelerate continuous improvement

Digital CoE; Change Assessment Management System (CAMS)

Unearth hidden value across key areas of safety, quality, production, supply chain & maintenance. De�ne prioritized use-case implementation roadmap

Manufacturing Excellence Diagnostic (MED)

Deploy organization-wide to reap bene�ts. Integrate people, processes, and systems

Lumada Manufacturing Insights (MFI) scalable architecture

MANAGEMENT CONSULTING

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INTELLIGENT MANUFACTURING

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