Siemens needs little introduction to South African industry, as the company has had a presence here since the early days of electrical power generation. Today, besides being a world-class company, Siemens has diversified its activities into a complete range of industrial products and solutions. Industrial fields range from the traditional electrical and telecommunications businesses through electronics and on to the full spectrum of automation and control, the latter including security and management solutions.
While many consider automation and control together with systems integration as being specific to the process industry, Siemens takes a much more holistic view including automation, drives, metering, electrical power generation, distribution and transmission activities for a core activities/industries pertinent to southern Africa:
* Metals, mining and paper.
* Oil and gas (including chemical).
* Infrastructure (including airports and harbours).
* Traffic control (robots and parking guidance systems).
* Other sectors including the water, food & beverage and cement industries.
Siemens can provide a total solution for its customers, from system design, through integration and ongoing support. Ongoing support is particularly important in larger turnkey projects as developments in technology and identification of new requirements will see a typical system undergo several upgrades during its working life. In many cases the local team makes use of the extensive expertise from Siemens AG in Germany to ensure the implementation of state-of-the-art solutions. While Siemens solutions are usually based on their own SIMATIC range of automation and drives, integration with third-party products if required is seamless.
While Siemens itself can supply the turnkey solution it is aware that many companies (often smaller concerns) prefer to either use in-house expertise or local systems integrators. To satisfy this requirement Siemens has a countrywide network of approved systems integrators and added-value re-sellers who are provided with full technical and logistical support. Further proof of this commitment to industry and the integrator business is that Siemens runs probably the largest training facility in this field in the country, some 1700 people being brought up to speed on automation platforms every year.
The activities of Siemens in the automation and control field are so diverse that in an overview such as this their expertise and success is best illustrated through recent projects in a selection of the fields in which the company is active.
Iron and steel
With the background of the parent company Siemens AG in the cornerstone German steel industry, this massive project was virtually a natural for the local company. Siemens itself has in fact developed a software package called 'Siroll' specifically for steel mills. Saldanha is indubitably one of the best examples of a totally integrated steel plant outside of the First World, and must be one of the biggest applications of artificial intelligence and neural networks on this continent. While Siemens took full responsibility for the automation and control of the plant and the systems integration, it partnered with Mannesman Demag on the mechanical integration of the process. The use of neural networks in the steelmaking process makes output more predictable, obviously resulting in higher productivity and lower operating costs.
Marine
As a company Siemens is not immediately identified as being involved in the ship building industry, but modern vessels are equivalent to large industrial units in terms of their power, automation and communications systems. The SIMATIC S7 platform is widely used by Siemens to provide integrated communications and automation on freight, passenger and naval vessels and it is expected that this will be the system of choice for the new corvettes and submarines which South Africa is purchasing from German ship builders. Modern naval vessels are highly automated and system uptime is even more critical than in the normal industrial environment.
Pipeline management
When it comes to refineries the concept of automation is of course well entrenched, but the unique niche where Siemens has positioned itself is in the automation and control of part of the 3000 km of pipelines operated by Petronet to distribute liquid fuels throughout South Africa. Localised manual operation of this system was literally a nightmare, and during the 1990s Petronet in collaboration with Siemens initiated the first phase of automation. Completed in 1998 and incorporating some fourteen of the more than 50 pumping stations this proved so successful that total automation of the entire pipeline system is now in progress. When completed in 2002 total control will be possible through a single human-machine-interface (HMI) located in Durban.
For this massive development (valued at more than R75 million) Petronet has entered into a long-term strategic agreement with Siemens that will see each of the remaining pump stations completely overhauled and modernised before being integrated into the automated system. The rollout strategy and technology standards were agreed to interactively by the two partners and the system will incorporate batch tracking (customer and type of fuel), leak detection and other critical safety factors. When completed it will provide Petronet with a world-class and cost effective solution. The cutting-edge expertise developed by Siemens in support of this major project could result in its further involvement in the many envisaged pipelines resulting from major recent discoveries of natural gas off the coast of South Africa and Namibia.
Materials handling
Ports are the lifeline that South Africa possesses in terms of export of our mineral wealth and imports of bulk value-added products. Productivity at harbours has to be maximised, as it is expensive to keep ships and crews at a quay or lying offshore. Typical of the major harbour projects undertaken by Siemens is the Richards Bay Coal Terminal (RBCT) where it has been involved in the integration of automated systems since the early eighties. Everything, including tipplers, stackers, reclaimers and shiploaders are integrated as discrete equipment into one huge, highly efficient and reliable 'factory'. RBCT operates around the clock and ensures the export of almost 70 million tons of coal each year. Four vessels can be loaded simultaneously at the 1,6 km quay and on average two ships are loaded each day.
Following on from its involvement with RBCT Siemens has worked closely with Portnet at all our major ports (including City Deep in Johannesburg), upgrading and commissioning systems to cope with containerisation. Now in a new venture with the Central Timber Co-operative Siemens is developing a novel high technology wood chip loader, which expels the chips under high pressure into the ship's hold so as to improve packing density and load capacity.
The automotive industry
Siemens has been particularly active in the automotive industry, working closely with manufacturers that have committed their operations to true global competitiveness through export of right hand drive vehicles. BMW has standardised on Siemens automation and control systems in terms of its new high-volume production line for the 3-Series, and its Rosslyn plant is soon to be upgraded with the company's integrated security and facility management system. Meanwhile Daimler-Chrysler has used the Simatic S5 for its new high-tech paint shop to allow it to meet the demanding requirements of the European and other markets. Proof that it is not just German companies that are impressed with Siemens automation solutions comes from the example of Toyota who has used the Simatic S5 on its Camry, Venture and new Hilux lines. In this case Siemens partnered with Mannesman Dematic, that company now having been acquired by Siemens AG.
The Siemens philosophy
While many other companies in the automation, instrumentation and control business have taken a step forward in terms of offering solutions rather than just products, Siemens itself has already taken a massive leap further. The company now believes that its role should be seen as being a lifecycle committed technology partner. The reasoning is clear, with support over the lifetime of a product or system becoming critical not just because of the high initial cost, but as a result of the fact that developments in technology and new customer requirements typically see plant upgrades occurring at least four times during their useful lifetime. Another major driver behind the Siemens strategy is that as automation and control moves further away from its traditional process industry base, new solutions for integration of discrete systems often need to be developed in collaboration with the customer. Finally partnership today also means being more flexible in the financial structuring of the package provided so that capital outlay is minimised, additional margins generated from productivity improvements being used to pay for maintenance and lease agreements. Above all, Siemens itself is a global company and operating in many spheres of the South African economy allows it to pass on benefits gained from industrial participation and counter trade agreements.
Within the space constraints of this article it has been impossible to cover the full capability of Siemens in regard to automation, control and systems integration. Other significant areas include postal sorting, food & beverage, airport automation, mining, and rail transportation as well as power generation, transmission and distribution (including metering). A relatively recent but rapidly growing field of application is the integration of security systems and building management. These areas will be covered in a future issue of SA Instrumentation and Control.
| Tel: | +27 11 652 2000 |
| Email: | [email protected] |
| www: | www.siemens.co.za |
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