Intelligence in Aggregates

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Need a clearer view of your processing plant?

Driving performance in aggregate production plants

Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) and other controllers control key assets within aggregates processing facilities, such as conveyors, crushers, pumps and fans. Whilst your existing control systems and the related industrial automation components will be able to run operational tasks, they may be holding you back.

The existing infrastructure may not be able to offer the level of flexibility and responsiveness needed to optimise efficiency and minimise waste while delivering required production levels.

The good news is that doesn’t mean you have to update every system in your operation at once! A well thought out staged approach can help to quickly drive performance improvements and remove pinch points without requiring considerable investments or extended downtime.

Let’s explore how targeted digitalisation investment programmes can help to optimise processing plants and boost performance:

Challenge

The first step is to look at the current automation infrastructure. What level of control exists at each of our assets and how easy will it be to extract performance data from these assets? Ultimately the answer to those fundamental questions will determine how our implementation plan is deployed and how much investment will be required at each stage.

Solution

The key to any digitalisation programme is to discuss the key objectives and critical business drivers with the manufacturing plant. For a typical aggregates plant it is likely to include a move to reduce energy costs and a system to avoid losing critical plant assets. Digitalisation can offer many benefits and many automation devices now offer a wealth of data that can report on for example, asset energy usage and the implementation of predictive maintenance techniques to protect those critical plant assets and deploy intelligent maintenance programmes. Focussing on known problem areas or pinch points is a great way to start and will often deliver shorter return on investment (ROI) periods for manageable outlays.

Mitsubishi Electric offers a full suite of automation solutions to deliver a complete digitalisation programme for the aggregates industry, which range from energy saving variable speed drives (VSDs), intelligent PLC and network solutions for control, data collection and aggregation and visualisation and enterprise level analytical solutions from our ICONICS GENESIS64 software suite. Our enterprise level solutions can be deployed in cloud based or ‘on premise’ servers as required.

The goal is to generate a view of the asset availability and overall plant performance which is critical to show the overall capabilities of the entire plant. The correct infrastructure will deliver real-time control strategies which help to improve production capacity and operational efficiencies and predict asset failure, preventing unexpected shutdowns.

Mitsubishi Electric has a proven track record of working with manufacturing and process plants to implement digitalisation programmes that can be tailored to suit the size of plant, available budget and meet the operational goals.

With a clear, well thought out, staged plan, with clear milestones along the way any size of business can benefit from the appropriate level of digitalisation, as better plant visibility will always result in improved plant performance.

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