Exploring steel informationization to promote instrumentation development

Iron and steel enterprises are the core of China's economic development and occupy a large international position. The informationization of the steel industry has strongly promoted the rapid development of instrumentation.

Iron and steel enterprises are affected by changes in external competitive environment and financial crisis. The development of domestic iron and steel enterprises has added numerous variables. The serious overcapacity, the price is about to bottom, the downstream demand is not flourishing, and the development of the steel industry can be described as “internal and external”. . Under such circumstances, some domestic large-scale steel metallurgy enterprises have begun to consider the implementation of advanced production and business management models and systems to adapt to changes in the external competition environment.

At present, China’s leading steel companies have listed information technology as one of the measures to improve their core competitiveness. The application of MES has become the focus of attention of iron and steel enterprises with the development of informatization. With the further acceleration of product structure adjustment, the demand for MES will become more and more urgent. The state has taken active and encouraging measures in the development of enterprise informationization, which has also greatly promoted the process of informationization of steel enterprises.

The three-level structure of BPS/MES/PCS has emerged in the control system. Liu Wei, deputy director of the Zhongyuan Cold Strip Plant of Lingyuan Iron and Steel Co., Ltd. stated that the first world trade war in China's accession to the WTO broke out in the steel industry. In addition to the impact of the financial crisis and the shrinking of the international market, the steel companies were challenged. Higher than other industries. In such an open environment, the improvement of the automation level of domestic steel plants is also a general trend.

In the aspect of detection technology and instrument development, the trends of networking, virtualization, intelligence, and high-precision are becoming more and more obvious. In terms of industrial control, the applications of PLC and DCS are mainly based, and the application prospect of field bus technology is promising. PLC and DCS have the tendency to move closer to each other's performance, that is to say, PLC has strengthened the loop control function, DCS has also greatly improved in the sequential control function. For the choice of both, the major steel companies have their own opinions. Due to price considerations, some companies prefer the full PLC system.

In recent years, due to the development of test technology, computing technology, image processing technology, and modeling, multimedia virtualization technology has made the obscure process more transparent and visible, which has greatly facilitated the actual operation process of steel employees. In addition, in order to reduce costs, foreign countries have introduced the concept of “unmanned factory” or “quasi-unmanned factory” into the metallurgical industry, and the unmanned operation of the entire workshop has resulted in the greatest savings for the staff of the steel company.

Different industries will make the corresponding automation products or technology differences also become larger. The characteristics of the traditional automation industry, the development of the metallurgical industry is more optimistic, there is a lot of space for fieldbus technology development.