With an annual production capacity of 32 000 mt milled and 7000 mt atomised product, DMS (dense media separators) Powders in Meyerton is the world's largest producer of FeSi (ferrosilicon), which is used as media in mineral and metal separation processes. In an automated process that has little tolerance for inefficiencies, the installation of Wonderware's DT Analyst is helping DMS Powders pinpoint the root cause of delays and downtimes in order to improve efficiency and the company's bottom line.
DMS Powders is a business unit of Samancor Manganese, which is a division of the BHP Billiton Group. DMS took a strategic decision to outsource its engineering department to ABB Asset Management Services. Part of ABB's responsibility is to analyse plant performance and to identify opportunities for production efficiency improvement.
"In order to improve production and equipment efficiency, we needed a tool to accurately track cause-and-effect scenarios in realtime," says Piet van der Merwe, ABB automation specialist. "This would not only allow us to pinpoint the root cause of production interruptions and losses but would also help establish performance norms for both plant and personnel. This ability to benchmark our performance against international standards is part of the DMS objective to remain the world's largest supplier of dense media separators. We chose DT Analyst because of its ease of integration with the existing suite of Wonderware solutions already in operation at the plant and also because just a single presentation showed how closely it met our needs. But one of the most important reasons for choosing it was its ability to determine OEE."
OEE (overall equipment effectiveness) is an internationally accepted benchmarking tool to measure plant efficiency based on the availability of equipment, production performance and quality of production. This allows managers to evaluate the true plant performance and will pinpoint potential improvement opportunities before making decisions about expansion or the purchase of new plant. OEE has become the crucial link between the financial and operational performance of production assets.
DT Analyst's ease of installation and customisation as well as its ability to easily be integrated with existing solutions was adequately demonstrated in an initial installation, which took no more than a weekend. "With help from Futuristix, we installed DT Analyst on the Friday morning and we had the first section of the plant configured that afternoon," says van der Merwe. "By Monday, the entire plant was on-line and we had also integrated DT Analyst with other applications such as InSQL, ActiveFactory and SuiteVoyager, which has since become the plant's daily intranet reporting tool of choice for realtime and historical production and financial information."
By focusing on the OEE parameters of performance and availability, DT Analyst has helped the DMS operations team to reduce the downtime of its induction furnaces from 8-10 hours/day to 5-8 hours. The main reason for this improvement was the fact that production operators and maintenance artisans became more aware of the type of activities which normally caused availability and performance losses. DT Analyst has also helped rectify poor performance in other areas such as the chipping plant where motors were standing idle for 70% of the day. They are now running for 70% of the day with the resulting increase in production. DT Analyst has helped to highlight non-optimal use of machinery through reduction in available power as the result of demands made by other machinery.
Yet another benefit is determining the effectiveness of the planned production schedules. This is possible due to the software's ability to distinguish between downtimes caused by production stoppages and downtime caused by equipment malfunctions. DT Analyst is also making DMS more environmentally friendly by continuously monitoring stack emissions and warning the operators when dust blown into the atmosphere reaches unacceptable levels.
"DT Analyst and its integration with other Wonderware solutions has given all levels of the operational and maintenance organisation an unprecedented degree of access to information based on the realities of the shop floor," says van der Merwe. "Virtually every aspect of the plant can now be analysed and decisions can be made on a continuous basis for the on-going and incremental improvement of processes and the optimal use of equipment."
For more information contact Mike le Plastrier, Futuristix Advanced Control Systems, 011 723 9900, info@futuristix.co.za, www.futuristix.co.za
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