Siemens has been engaged to digitise and automate the new indoor stockyard for the Jiangsu Binxin Special Steel Material Company (Binxin Steel) in China.
China’s moves in recent years to improve air quality in its urban centres has seen a push to move industrial stockyards to indoor locations. Binxin Steel has sought to gain competitive advantage as its own stockyard, for steel and iron, has moved inside.
The company has appointed Zhongye Changtian International Engineering Company (CIE) to upgrade its stockyard intelligence by moving to an autonomous management system from Siemens. The move will reduce the need for hiring and retaining skilled workers and engineers with the move, Siemens said.
It also represents a first step towards upgrading the company’s broader systems.
“To optimise throughput times and guarantee requested quality output, storage and transport systems are an important part of advanced facilities for the transfer of bulk materials such as ore, coal and flux,” said Siemens in a statement.
Siemens will automate the operation of stackers and reclaimers, machines used in bulk material handling, on site to reduce operational costs, as well as wear and tear on the mechanical parts of the equipment. Data from these machines will form a live 3D operational model of the yard, showing both quantity and quality of materials.
Parameters for the operation of stockyard machines are set remotely, in a control centre, and passed to the machines. “The rest is automatic,” said Siemens.
“Binxin Steel will be able to achieve higher performance, increased accuracy, full utilisation of the stockyard area, and optimised energy consumption compared to staffed operation.”
Earlier this month, Siemens confirmed a deal to overhaul production at Mintal Group, the largest maker of carbon ferrochrome in China, and one of its biggest steel producers.
It followed another deal in the Chinese mining industry, with the YanZhou Coal Mine Company to collect and analyse data from the hoist systems at its coal mining facilities.
