Jose Gil, FLSmidth Cement USA, discusses the evolution of digital and how this has resulted in a step change in delivering service and support.
A cement plant’s job is to produce cement as productively and profitably as possible. FLSmidth Cement’s model of operational excellence and principles of lifecycle support is how it helps producers achieve these objectives:
- Diagnose: understand the gaps and identify improvement opportunities.
- Improve: implement corrective actions identified during the initial assessment.
- Stabilise: maintain plant performance.
This approach relies on several pillars, including product-based upgrades, digital solutions, and services. A comprehensive overview is beyond the scope of this article. Instead, FLSmidth Cement will focus on how the convergence of digital solutions and services facilitates operational excellence. In short, the purpose of this article is to discuss how digitally enabled services have matured to become a powerful tool to help diagnose and correct process inefficiencies – if not entirely avoid them.
Services in the cement industry: 1887 – today
For most of the cement industry’s history, receiving expert advice and service support was complicated. When FLSmidth Cement built its first cement plant in 1887, the only options were telegraph and arduous travel to remote sites by service engineers. This eased through the 20th century as global telephone networks developed; however, these remained patchy, especially in the remote locations of many cement plants.
Automation and digital solutions have slowly eased service delivery. In 1969, FLSmidth’s Henrik Bang-Pederson and his colleagues launched the QCX® (quality control by computer and X-ray) system. This was followed in 1975 by the first forerunner of the company’s ECS™ plant control system, which now has more than 2000 installations globally. And the technology continues to advance. For example, the latest version of the ECS/ProcessExpert® (PXP) advanced process control solution now includes self-adaptive control – a feature likely beyond anything imagined by the first developers.
The focus of this paper is about services and using digital as an enabler. So, why the discussion about automation solutions? It may seem a bit off topic, but the fundamentals of digital capabilities underpin the advances of both. Moreover, engineers with backgrounds in automation systems were the natural pioneers in pushing the limits of connectivity, remote monitoring, and support. This began in the late 1990s and slowly grew over the first decades of the 21st century to cover not just automation systems, but also critical mechanical and process equipment. Fast forward to today, the widespread adoption of Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and Industry 4.0 technologies through the 2010s has provided the next step-change in the service landscape, accelerated by the outbreak of COVID-19.
The industry is now in an era with less need for service engineers to crisscross the globe in an endless quest to fix problems. Instead, they can access and monitor plant and equipment data remotely to deliver expert support to cement plants 24/7 for faster advice, troubleshooting, and corrective action. To make this support easily accessible for cement plants, FLSmidth Cement has designed specific offerings for online condition monitoring services (OCMS) for key equipment, including ATOX® and OK® mills, kilns, Cross-Bar® coolers Ventomatic® equipment and Pfister® weighfeeders.
Online condition monitoring services
The concept is simple: to spot problems before they become problems. To do so, equipment performance data is collected from the plant and connected to FLSmidth Cement’s Global Remote Service Centre. Here, the data is run through specially developed algorithms that flag any irregularities for review by the centre’s team of experts, who will contact the plant if there are any immediate concerns. The data is also readily available to the plant in real-time and curated into a regular report, which advises the plant on upcoming maintenance needs and opportunities for optimisation. The following examples illustrate how these digitally enabled services are powerful tools for diagnosing and correcting process inefficiencies.
Case study 1: kiln crank monitoring
Consider the kiln. An upset here will impact productivity, product quality, and environmental performance. Yet many kilns operate with just a few isolated sensors and inspections every 2 – 3 years. This does not provide enough information to optimise kiln performance or maintenance.
For example, problems with the kiln crank can cause bearings to run hot, increased lining loss, cracking of the kiln shell and supporting roller shafts, and wear of the supporting rollers and kiln tyres. Therefore, promptly reacting to any issue with the crank can reduce maintenance time and costs. Yet crank issues may not be picked up by plant operators (whose focus will rightly be production and other KPIs) until it is too late. However, by measuring the deflection from the crank on the roller, OCMS for kilns detect if the crank value deviates from the allowable limit, allowing quick correction.
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