[Ferro-Alloys.com]

  The 3D digital factory project in Tanggang new area of Hegang group undertaken by Capital Engineering & Research Incorporation Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "CERI") is the first digital project in China’s iron and steel industry covering the whole process business, which include stockyard, ironmaking, steelmaking and steel rolling. It not only undertakes the important task of building a digital and intelligent plant in Tanggang new area, but also has a pioneering significance for promoting the digitization and intelligent process of iron and steel industry in China.

  With the transformation and upgrading of manufacturing industry, digital plants have gradually become the focus of domestic and foreign manufacturing enterprises. After years of development, it reached an agreement: building a digital plant first to achieve intelligent manufacturing. Due to complex production process, a large variety of process equipment, lack of advanced digital design, delivery and operation-and-maintenance system, there has been no breakthrough platform to be applied among China's traditional iron and steel enterprises.

  In recent years, Hegang group has constantly explored and innovated in the field of digitalization and intellectualization. Since preparation, the intelligent manufacturing system of the whole project has been repeatedly demonstrated and carefully planned. As an important part of the overall intelligent manufacturing system, the whole design and implementation process of the digital plant has been strongly supported by leaders at all levels of Tangshan Iron and Steel Co., Ltd. Departments of the company, which contain the production scheduling, equipment management, information automation and other relevant business departments, actively engaged in the construction of digital plant project. Furthermore, many business areas, from factory modeling, equipment coding, information system data integration, production logistics scheduling to other relevant areas, will work together with CERI to build a full process digital plant.

  As the overall design of Tanggang new area of Hegang, CERI has carried out three-dimensional design of general drawing, public and auxiliary pipelines and various process units. By using BIM, GIS, AR / VR, digital delivery and some other high-tech like this to build a whole process virtual steel plant. It completed a comprehensive connection among digital design, digital delivery and digital operation-and-maintenance, through organizing data creatively, integrating plant design, construction information, dynamic production process information, operation-and-maintenance information, pipeline information, logistics and security information to fully realize a whole process digital management. More efficient operation and management mode can be achieved with the digitization of data flow, information flow and workflow.

  In recent years, CERI has been committed to the construction of digital plant of iron and steel enterprises, and has accumulated rich experience in three major fields: plant digital design, digital delivery and digital operation-and-maintenance. With the continuous development of BIM Technology, CERI takes the lead in fully applying BIM Technology to plant design in China, and makes every effort to explore and innovate 3D digital delivery service in the project. CERI combines steel plant design, the experience of production control technology and advanced digital production, which creates an advanced digital plant delivery and operation management platform.

  Through unified BIM coding system, CERI associates the three-dimensional digital model with process production line, main equipment, attachments, equipment data, production data and operation information, combining digital twin technology to form a virtual digital factory. The factory is also a digital platform, which integrates management-and-control, digital asset management, production simulation, intelligent equipment maintenance, network safety monitoring and emergency drilling.

  As the basic information platform of Hegang in Tanggang new area, the industry fully integrates the company’s production, equipment, energy, logistics and other businesses to provide an all-round services based on digitalization for the new area and participate in the whole process of digital design, operation and maintenance.

  With the promotion of the overall project construction, the business data is offered to digital industry platform according to the demand of design. This is conducive for Hegang to breaking the tradition, establishing a new working mode, centralizing company’s production, equipment, energy and logistics to digitalization control platform.

  Digitalized products as an important part of the new generation intelligent manufacturing of iron and steel industry, have been applied in the whole process of Hegang. In the future, CERI will together with Hegang Group to continue to be the model of digitalized industry, expand and improve the scope and level of digital twin technology, so as to comprehensively drive China’s iron and steel industry to realize digitalization, intelligent transformation and high-quality development.

• [Editor:Catherine Ren]