In a sheet-steel plant of China Baowu Steel Group Corporation in Xinyu, east China’s Jiangxi Province, robots and three unmanned intelligent vehicles are busy working in the dark, delivering rolls of steel from the warehouse.
Both the unmanned intelligent vehicles and robots work 24 hours a day, lifting 7,000 tonnes of steel rolls daily, according to Hu Hua, a worker at the plant. The tonnage has been increased by 120 percent per hour, while the loss rate has dropped by more than 90 percent, saving more than 180,000 yuan (roughly 25,000 U.S. dollars) each year.
Meanwhile, the traditional iron-making workshop at the plant has also achieved an intelligent transformation, with computers effortlessly managing crucial tasks like adjusting furnace temperatures and airflow for molten-iron smelting.
Jin Hongbing, a veteran at the workshop, said the smart transition of the whole operation process has effectively improved the production efficiency. “About 2.6 million yuan can be saved annually by reducing the failure rate,” said Jin.
Such changes have been brought about by a centralized control center. The status and index data of production lines, including energy consumption and the carbon emissions, are displayed in real time on a big screen. It helps shorten the steel-roll production process from one hour to 10 minutes.
https://english.news.cn/20240624/631af5d20bd84dae8d36c5449b6fca4f/c.html