TPT May 2023

ARTICLE

Fives

Shandong Province Sifang Technical Development Group From data to information The next step Fives is taking in developing the digital soul of its equipment is to suggest to the operator the best actions to take in order to maximise production efficiency, in terms of quality, performance and maintenance impact. This takes the form of multiple technical proposals:

• Supplying information dashboards that take advantage of the vast

Multiple benefits The benefits that the end customer can experience already from the technology that Fives makes available are countless. First, let us consider the efficiency increase associated with the repeatability typical of digital processes, which is particularly important in today’s context of fragmented production batches and consequent frequent format changes. The storage of optimal parameters in the form of recipes allows very fast startup times at each format change, reducing the associated downtime and helping to increase overall plant efficiency. To all this must be added an upward thrust in finished product quality, which is increasingly important especially in advanced markets, and a related reduction in waste thanks to the immediacy of information and the focus on placing measuring points as early as possible along the production line. In addition, do not forget the possibility of optimising adjustments in terms of energy consumption, helping improve the green approach in an industry with a non-negligible environmental impact. Finally, yet importantly, comes safety, a topic toward which the sensitivity of entrepreneurs is steadily growing. It is increasingly guaranteed thanks to the marginal interventions of operators, who will more and more limit themselves to acting as simple process controllers, also helping the company to face the generational turnover and its related depletion of skills. Conclusion Digitisation of processing equipment is a never-ending journey that Fives started several years ago and which Fives managers strongly believe in, by allocating dedicated investments year after year. Advanced solutions are already available to customers who can count on a company with its own development team, that is committed to the digital evolution of its solutions, providing customers with countless advantages in terms of profitability, safety and quality of the final product.

amount of data available due to the increasing electrification of lines, turning simple data into useful information for the operator through advanced algorithms. • Pushing the integration of commercial sensors and the development of completely innovative solutions for online measurement of pipe quality parameters, in terms of geometry and defects (such as weld quality control, side flatness, pipe diameter, straightness). • Using artificial intelligence to develop predictive processes that, starting from said information, are able to predict the future machines behaviour, measuring the performance margins still available (in terms of the life of consumables – for example, blades for cutting machines – the amount of energy that can be saved and quality of the finished product) and suggesting the optimal setups for even unknown productions. All of this is supplied by the OTO Advisors software packages and made available both to operators and, through mobile devices, also to foremen and managers, who can real time check on production trends wherever they are suggesting immediate corrective action. Learning while running The next future is automatic process tuning. Over there, the suggestion to the operator turns into the automatic adjustments that the machine carries out autonomously, reading the output parameters and feeding back to the actuators leading to the optimum setup according to the quality parameters settled by the customer. Once again, artificial intelligence will be the star, enabling the equipment to learn itself and improving its ability over time.

Fives www.fivesgroup.com/steel/tube-mills

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MAY 2023