On September 10, 2024, Schneider Electric held a VIP customer summit for the non-ferrous metal industry in Wuxi with the theme of "Green, Safe, and Efficient, Creating Sustainable Development Influence in the Nonferrous Metal Industry". Together with industry partners, experts, and others, the summit discussed feasible paths for accelerating the digital transformation of the non-ferrous metal industry and comprehensively showcased Schneider Electric's solutions and application cases in the non-ferrous metal industry.
Since the release of the "Implementation Guidelines for Digital Transformation of Nonferrous Metals Industry", the digital transformation of the entire industry has been accelerating. However, in practice, due to a lack of experience, companies find it difficult to truly implement top-level planning; On the other hand, non-ferrous metals have a wide variety of subdivisions, significant differences in processes, and complex workflows, making it difficult and costly for enterprises to implement digital transformation. At the same time, they face significant environmental pressures that cannot be underestimated. In this context, non-ferrous metal enterprises urgently need to introduce digital transformation "models" that have been tested in practice as reference, and utilize "external brains" with professional consulting experience to assist themselves in overall planning.
Currently, the "Lighthouse Factory" certified by the Davos World Economic Forum in collaboration with McKinsey is considered a model for advanced levels of digital transformation in enterprises. At the meeting, Qiao Qian, Vice President of End User Business of Schneider Electric's Industrial Automation Business, pointed out that "reducing personnel and promoting green development are the key goals of building a 'lighthouse factory' in the non-ferrous metal industry. Enterprises need to use technologies such as industrial Internet of Things and AI to achieve production control, process optimization, and energy efficiency optimization, improve equipment operation and safety management capabilities, and at the same time, combine their own business needs to sort out a list of use cases, conduct comprehensive evaluations and rankings based on feasibility, replicability, operational performance, financial returns, etc., and plan the implementation path of use cases. Finally, through lean training and system building from management to grassroots organizations, companies can better promote their organizational culture and talent transformation, and build a digital 'soil'
From consultation to implementation, assisting in the construction of smart factories
In response to the urgent needs of enterprises for digitalization and green low-carbon transformation, Schneider Electric relies on its deep accumulation and technical expertise in the non-ferrous metal field to provide consulting led solutions covering factory level, operation level, control level, and equipment level in the non-ferrous metal industry, helping enterprises build green, safe, and efficient intelligent factories.
At the factory level, Schneider Electric's intelligent factory planning consulting integrates strategic initiatives and business scenarios to provide factory level intelligent manufacturing planning and lighthouse factory planning consulting for non-ferrous metal enterprises. Among them, the factory level intelligent manufacturing planning provides unified design and planning around six aspects, including park/factory construction, factory operation and management, and production process optimization, and is gradually promoted. It can achieve full coverage in all fields, levels, and links, helping non-ferrous metal enterprises clarify their thinking and achieve orderly promotion of digitalization and greening.
At the operational level, Schneider Electric provides digital solutions including AVEVA E3D Design 3D design software, asset information management platform, energy management solution (EMS+), predictive maintenance, AVEVA PI System operation big data management platform, etc., to help enterprises build a data "dual base" that integrates asset information management and operation information management, ensuring compliance, correctness, and consistency of information. Among them,
The asset information management platform can help production enterprises establish unified standards for data information, provide full cycle digital management of data assets, and support the digital construction of enterprises; On the other hand, it can also help design institutes improve their design integration and collaboration capabilities, while enhancing the efficiency of procurement and factory construction, and realizing the business extension from Building Information Modeling (BIM) to Asset Information Modeling (AIM).
The Energy Management Solution (EMS+) can customize and develop an energy efficiency application analysis module library for the application scenarios of non-ferrous metal enterprises, breaking down the data gap between various energy related systems in the factory, realizing the planning, organization, control, optimization, and supervision of energy consumption processes, helping enterprises optimize energy use, reduce energy waste, and lower carbon emissions.
EcoStruxure PMA Predictive Maintenance Consultant is a "mathematical+mechanistic model" equipment fault prediction and diagnosis system based on process data and vibration data. It can predict faults and manage healthy operation and maintenance of key equipment such as fans, flash furnaces, agitator mills, circulation pumps, nitrogen generators, oxygen generators, and dryers, promoting the digital transformation of metallurgical plants.
At the control level, Schneider Electric focuses on optimizing control, process control, and safety and protection, providing EcoStruxure Foxboro DCS distributed control system, Modicon M580 PLC high-end controller, SCADA system, APC advanced process control, and intelligent terminals to help non-ferrous metal enterprises create more efficient, stable, and reliable production processes. Among them,
The EcoStruxure Foxboro DCS distributed control system adopts redundant fault-tolerant design from IO bus, I/O module, controller to network and power supply, which can ensure no failure output, no potential fault threat, and no disturbance switching during operation. It can meet various application environments and occasions of non-ferrous metal enterprises, and optimize device availability by providing rich and comprehensive diagnostic functions.
The Modicon M580 PLC high-end controller combines the many advantages of industrial Ethernet technology into an industrial collaborative control architecture, ensuring smoother and more efficient collaboration between different control levels, systems, and devices within the system. Through strong encryption and verification functions, it can effectively prevent software changes, thereby helping enterprises improve production efficiency, optimize total cost of ownership, and provide comprehensive protection for technology investment.
APC advanced process control is based on the "metallurgical mechanism model+multivariate prediction model", which can achieve metallurgical balance calculation and feedback correction, provide theoretical support, reliable and economical operating guidance parameters for the smelting process, and can also jointly measure control variables, calculate control variables and system disturbance variables to accurately identify and model multiple devices and sections, provide optimal operating variables to the control system, improve control quality, reduce fluctuations, and achieve "edge optimization operation".
At the equipment level, Schneider Electric's ATV Yucheng series frequency converters can improve equipment performance and reduce operating costs by optimizing energy consumption and user comfort. Among them, the all-new generation of medium voltage frequency converter series Altivar 1200C-S can help users save energy, reduce emissions, increase efficiency and production, and safeguard safety production with comprehensive reliability upgrades, full-size optimized design, and intelligent application support.
Balancing production and energy management to empower sustainable development in the industry
As a major energy consumer, the non-ferrous metal industry particularly needs to optimize energy management, real-time grasp production dynamics and energy consumption, and achieve energy conservation and consumption reduction. At present, Schneider Electric's solutions for the non-ferrous metal industry are widely applied to many leading enterprises in the industry, providing strong support for the sustainable development of the industry.
For example, Yunnan Chihong Zinc Germanium Co., Ltd. relied on Schneider Electric's energy management system EMS+to complete data collection for all energy media such as wind, water, electricity, gas, raw coal, and diesel. Through energy-saving actions such as energy balance calculation, energy analysis, diagnostic optimization, and equipment energy-saving transformation, and in conjunction with the application of the medium voltage frequency converter series ATV1200C-S and the upgrading and transformation of automation equipment, a complete energy performance management system was established. Through continuous improvement, the lean energy management system was further achieved. In addition, Schneider Electric also assists Chihong Zinc Germanium in clarifying the current digital status and development needs of the enterprise through intelligent factory construction consulting and planning, planning the digital transformation blueprint, implementing the implementation path and project plan for the next three years, and continuously enhancing the competitiveness of the enterprise.
As a digital transformation expert in global energy management and automation, Schneider Electric will always take digitalization as the starting point and greening as the goal, creating innovative overall solutions that are more in line with industry characteristics and scenarios. Through comprehensive empowerment from strategic formulation to implementation, we will help enterprises accelerate digital transformation and work together to create sustainable development influence in the non-ferrous metal industry.