Manufacturing Metals

Manufacturing Metals

Asset: Wire Compactor

A Steel Manufacturing Plant Produces Construction Grade Rebar. 24 Hours a Day, 7 Days a Week, Scrap Metal is Converted into Steel. Each Year the Plant Produces 1.1 Billion Pounds of Steel Rebar Used in Concrete. That’s Enough Rebar to Circle the Globe.

Challenge:

  • Dependent upon machine uptime
  • Pressure cylinders within the compactor fail to control compression and speed causing problems in binding the coil
  • Equipment failure occurs in the final stage of production causing the entire line to stop, can you say bottleneck?
  • Critical asset unequipped with sensors to produce data

Results:

  • SORBA-SDC (Smart Data Collector) connected to a Siemens PLC, collecting months of time series data to analyze the behavior of the equipment
  • Minimized cost by not engaging IT personnel to connect to the enterprise network. SORBA does not require any firewall ports to open
  • Detected anomalies with lead times up to 19 days. Correlated all potential issues with work order events