Automation solutions for yard systems in the metal industry
In today’s metal industry, it is no longer enough to simply improve the quality, productivity and flexibility of the entire production units in a steelworks.
In order to remain profitable and competitive as a steel producing and processing company in the future, the optimization and automation of the intralogistics of semi-finished and finished products is of great importance, worldwide.
The optimal solution: a networked and fully automated yard system
Where exactly are my products located on the factory premises?
What is the genealogy of my products?
Which production facilities should be used next to process them further?
The answers to such questions should be available to our customers at any time and within a few seconds.
The optimal solution to provide these answers is a networked and fully automated yard system (storage location system) that combines the know-how of software, automation, intralogistics and specific industry knowledge.
Contract signed between Primetals Technolgies & ABF
Primetals Technologies and ABF will be working closely together in future to ensure that such automation solutions are available, developed and optimized for steelworks.
The signing ceremony for the partnership took place on June 15, 2023 at METEC in Düsseldorf.
Primetals Technologies: Leading global plant engineering, automation & digitalization solution provider and metallurgical service partner
ABF: Specialist for automation solutions in the field of warehouse digitization
Reasons that speak in favor of cooperation
Hans-Jürgen Zeiher – Head of Electrical Engineering and Automation at Primetals Technologies – explained the reasons for this collaboration in the Green Lounge at the Primetals stand: “We want to offer outstanding solutions for steel producers to fully automate their warehouses. That’s why we decided to work with a company that perfectly complements our expertise in process optimization, metallurgy and automation.”
The perfect cooperation match
The cooperation can be described as a “perfect match”: This is because Primetals Technologies has the know-how of metallurgical function integration and ABF has the expertise to implement it in the bearing area.
Kurt Herzog – Head of Industry 4.0 at Primetals Technologies – also commented: “In a steelworks, a warehouse functions like a supplier for the downstream unit.
The production planning system determines which products are to be manufactured.
Which metallurgical properties are required is stored in knowledge databases in process control software.
Therefore, all these systems need to be fully networked and that is why we intend to build a long-term partnership with ABF to combine our expertise and strengths.”
ABF recognized potential for improvement and developed OneBase®MFT
ABF recognized 15 years ago that many customers had a very high level of plant automation.
However, the material flow and internal transport logistics often showed considerable potential for improvement.
This applies not only to automation, but also to process reliability (e.g. avoiding mix-ups and searching for materials).
The ABF product development team has put a lot of effort into developing the OneBase®WORLD to include the intralogistics component.
Many implemented projects have impressively demonstrated that the development of OneBase®MFT(Material Flow Tracking) has been very successful.
Our MFT solution is already being used in the wood, electronics manufacturing and, above all, steel production and processing industries.
What are the advantages of OneBase®MFT?
The real-time material tracking functions of OneBase® now make it possible to know where every coil, slab and heavy plate is located in the warehouse at all times in projects with Primetals.
With the help of Local Positioning Radar and laser support, every material movement is tracked in real time.
It does not matter whether this is carried out with a manual or automatic crane or a ground vehicle.
We also upgrade manually operated cranes with smart sensor technology.
This ensures end-to-end traceability of all movements and complete warehouse transparency for our customers.
Optimum material flow is a very important factor, especially when considering sustainability and energy efficiency.
Coordinated and optimized interaction is also important when transporting an interlinked piece of material across several means of transport with manual, semi-automatic and fully automatic transports.
The material flow function of the OneBase®MFTsystem is in demand.
It forwards optimized transport orders to the automatic and manned means of transport at the right time – from storage and transfer to supplying the downstream production lines or automatic loading onto rail wagons or trucks.
Pleased with the synergy of the cooperation with Primetals Technologies
Mr. Freiberger – responsible for strategic product planning at ABF – and Christian Hiebl – COO of ABF – are pleased about the synergy of the cooperation with Primetals Technologies: “With this partnership in the field of intralogistics for the steel producing and processing industry, we are returning to our ABF roots.
It is now up to us to grow these roots together and thereby establish great products and services for our future customers.”
