Siemens Autonomous Stockyard Management System

To improve air qual­i­ty in China’s urban cen­ters, part of the country’s counter mea­sures has result­ed in stock­yard of iron, steel and the pro­duc­tion of oth­er indus­tri­al activ­i­ties to move to indoor facil­i­ties instead of tra­di­tion­al out­door loca­tions. To take an indus­try lead­er­ship role, while con­tin­u­ing to meet expand­ing mar­ket needs by increas­ing pro­duc­tion capac­i­ty, the Jiang­su Binx­in Spe­cial Steel Mate­r­i­al Co. Ltd. (Binx­in Steel) decid­ed to upgrade its plant intel­li­gence by mov­ing to an inno­v­a­tive autonomous stock­yard man­age­ment sys­tem from Siemens. This also has the advan­tage of over­com­ing the chal­lenge of hir­ing and retain­ing skilled work­ers and engi­neers, while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly pro­vid­ing con­tin­u­ous, safe, secure, and reli­able oper­a­tions. This project is a first step towards upgrad­ing of the company‘s plant intelligence.

To opti­mize 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. What’s more, with autonomous oper­a­tion of stack­ers and reclaimers, Binx­in Steel will be able to achieve high­er per­for­mance, increased accu­ra­cy, full uti­liza­tion of the stock­yard area, and opti­mized ener­gy con­sump­tion com­pared to staffed oper­a­tion. Siemens’ advanced automa­tion solu­tions secure autonomous oper­a­tion of the end cus­tomers’ stack­ers and reclaimers, reduc­ing oper­a­tional costs and achiev­ing a smoother and safer oper­a­tion with less wear and tear on the mechan­i­cal parts of the equipment.

A core ele­ment of the man­age­ment sys­tem is the stock­yard 3D mod­el with a record of both quan­ti­ty and qual­i­ty of mate­ri­als. The mod­el is updat­ed reg­u­lar­ly with data deliv­ered by stack­ers and reclaimers. This means cus­tomers such as Binx­in Steel also ben­e­fit from high­er safe­ty as no oper­a­tors is need­ed at the machines: after work­ing area and para­me­ters for each job are spec­i­fied, the details are cal­cu­lat­ed auto­mat­i­cal­ly and approved by the con­trol cen­ter – then the job is trans­ferred to the machines. The rest is auto­mat­ic. To pre­vent col­li­sions between machines and oth­er objects and con­struc­tions, and there­fore equip­ment out­ages, the stock­yard machine comes with a pro­tec­tion sys­tem that uses data which were deliv­ered by sensors.

Zhongye Changt­ian Inter­na­tion­al Engi­neer­ing Co., Ltd. (CIE) has ser­viced China’s steel indus­try for more than 60 years as a gen­er­al con­trac­tor of engi­neer­ing, pro­cure­ment and con­struc­tion (EPC), and this time under­took the Binx­in Steel Stock­yard project using Siemens indus­try lead­ing autonomous stock­yard man­age­ment tech­nol­o­gy. CIE is an EPC and Class‑A design insti­tute with tech­ni­cal inte­gra­tion abil­i­ty, plus its own sin­ter­ing technology.