According to ABB, Zurich, Switzerland, its recently launched Ability Performance Optimization Service for cold rolling mills, offers manufacturers of steel, aluminium, and other metals a way to reach new levels of operation.
The new service is part of ABB’s metals digital portfolio and Collaborative Operations for Metals suite. It combines continuous performance monitoring using ABB Ability Data Analytics with real-time support from ABB experts.
The data analytics component uses process-specific algorithms based on a century of metals domain expertise to collect high frequency data from mill control systems and discover trends, benchmarks and other performance factors, sending alerts to operators and maintenance when opportunities to optimize performance are identified.
ABB experts are available to provide onsite or offsite support, recommending actions to ensure the mill maintains its performance targets against key performance indicators (KPIs) for productivity, quality and yield. Leveraging the collective strengths of metals producers and ABB experts, access to dashboards is shared, enabling all parties to drill down to individual coil level.
In addition, ABB’s experts can provide customers with detailed reports at regular intervals describing areas for improvement, identified trends, or problem areas found in historical data, allowing for continuous improvement over time.
Key benefits of the new service include continuous collaboration and access to experts; increased productivity through improved asset performance and reduced downtime; higher yield and quality resulting from immediate corrective action when problems occur; reduced risk of equipment failure; the ability to leverage insights across the enterprise; and reductions in waste, energy, and other costs.
