February 5, 2019
- GE Will Deploy Its Motor Fleet Asset Performance Management solution to ArcelorMittal’s steel plant in Gent, Belgium
- The Once Digitalized Steel Plant Will See Reduced Unplanned Downtime and Enhanced Productivity
Gent, Belgium – 6 February 2019 – GE Power (NYSE: GE) and ArcelorMittal recently signed the agreement to launch a joint digital pilot at the ArcelorMittal steel plant in Gent, Belgium, by deploying GE’s Motor Fleet Asset Performance Management (APM) solution, powered by Predix, to reduce unplanned downtime and enhance productivity.
Steelmaking is a complicated process that encompasses a large number of power conversion devices. In general, one single processing line can have up to hundreds of motors with their associated drives running conveyor belts or driving rolling mills. These electric machines’ performance is therefore crucial to the plant’s overall productivity, directly affecting steelmakers’ profits and quality of the end products.
“Being at the front of technological innovation, ArcelorMittal’s plant in Gent goes a step further by deploying the Motor Fleet APM. We believe this digital technology will transform the steel plant to achieve new efficiencies that the industry has not seen. By working with GE to adopt data-driven intelligence, we anticipate significant reductions in unplanned downtime and therefore enhanced productivity in our plant,” said Wim Van Gerven, CEO Business Division North, ArcelorMittal.
GE’s Motor Fleet APM will monitor the motors and drives for data collection and analytics. It provides a holistic view of the plant performance. The data is also compared to its perfectly healthy digital twin – a digital replica built on the normal operating profile. By spotting data variations, the software will automatically indicate future potential electrical and mechanical faults. The operator is then warned to take immediate actions to instantly adjust parameters to avoid overloading the equipment and ensure their peak performances.
Unplanned downtime is one of key cost drivers in steel plants. GE’s Motor Fleet APM solution allows the shift from traditional calendar-based repairs to predictive maintenance, significantly reduce downtime and maintenance costs; also allowing operators to plan the repair in conjunction with planned downtime to further reduce unplanned downtime.
“Downtime is a billion-dollar problem for the industry as unplanned outages can cause the industry to lose up to 10% of production time a year,” said Gagan Sood, CEO Industry Power Wind, GE’s Power Conversion business. “We are very excited to work in partnership with ArcelorMittal, the world’s leading steel and mining company, to pioneer the usage of digital tools and cloud analytics for tackling down one of the key challenges the industry is facing today.”
“Digitalization has blasted a dose of fresh air through the century-old industry. We believe in its potential to boost productivity, and the launch of this digital pilot represents an important milestone in the digital transformation of the steelmaking industry,” said Azeez Mohammed, president & CEO, GE’s Power Conversion business.
About GE
GE (NYSE:GE) drives the world forward by tackling its biggest challenges: Energy, health, transportation—the essentials of modern life. By combining world-class engineering with software and analytics, GE helps the world work more efficiently, reliably, and safely. For more than 125 years, GE has invented the future of industry, and today it leads new paradigms in additive manufacturing, materials science, and data analytics. GE people are global, diverse and dedicated, operating with the highest integrity and passion to fulfill GE’s mission and deliver for our customers. www.ge.com
About GE Power
GE Power is a world energy leader providing equipment, solutions and services across the energy value chain from generation to consumption. Operating in more than 180 countries, our technology produces a third of the world’s electricity, equips 90 percent of power transmission utilities worldwide, and our software manages more than forty percent of the world’s energy. Through relentless innovation and continuous partnership with our customers, we are developing the energy technologies of the future and improving the power networks we depend on today. For more information please visit www.ge.com/power, and follow GE Power on Twitter and on LinkedIn.
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