· Support Baowu Group to complete its Intelligent Manufacturing 2025 blue print
· Several pilot applications are under investigation to support Baowu Group‘s Intelligent Manufacturing strategy
· Siemens and Baowu Group work together to develop a road map towards Intelligent Manufacturing for brown field in the highly automated Iron & Steel industry
Recently, a Siemens delegation led by Dr. Juergen Brandes, CEO of the Process Industries and Drives Division of Siemens AG, met with the management of the Chinese Baowu Steel Group Corporation Limited (Baowu Group) represented by its President Mr. Chen Derong. This is the first meeting between the two managers after the foundation of Baowu Steel Group and the two parties reviewed their ongoing projects and discussed future collaborations on Intelligent Manufacturing. In June 2016, Siemens and the former BaoSteel Group signed a “Strategic Agreement for Intelligent Manufacturing (Industrie 4.0)”, and on that basis Siemens has helped Baowu Group to successfully define a BaoSteel Intelligent Manufacturing Blue Print for 2025 and is now supporting its implementation.
“Siemens’ advanced Digital Enterprise solutions enable our customers to realize integration and digital transformation across their entire value chain, and provide practical applications for brown field like Baowu Group requires. Our aspiration is that all applications realize tangible process improvement, higher productivity, efficiency and flexibility,” Juergen Brandes explains. “Our cooperation is an important contribution to the formation of an Industrie 4.0 standard for China’s iron & Steel industry, and together we aim to explore repeatable business models for the Iron & Steel industry as well as other industries in China.”
During the deployment of the project “Intelligent 1580 Hot Strip Mill” – a pilot project for intelligent manufacturing defined by China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology – Siemens has supported Baowu Group in developing several pilot projects which meet the criteria of innovation, repeatability and profitability. Some examples are projects on smart energy, multiple wireless applications, RFID identification for roll-oiling robots, and an application for frame truck tracking in the finished products warehouse. In addition, Siemens has filed nine patent applications developed for the steel industry based on its “Industrie 4.0” concept.
Both parties will further promote Intelligent Manufacturing in Baowu’s manufacturing sites in Shanghai, Zhanjiang, Wuhan and Meishan through several collaborations, particularly focusing on unmanned operation, integrated decision making system and PLM integration throughout value chain.
Iron & Steel industry is strongly automated and heavily uses software solutions already today. To achieve the vision of Intelligent Manufacturing and “Industrie 4.0”, the existing management systems needs to integrate advanced concepts as “Equipment Lifecycle Management (ELM)” and “Product Lifecycle Management (PLM)”. The Siemens engineering design platform COMOS and collaboration platform Teamcenter provide answers for this.
Siemens and the former Baosteel Group appointed a joint working team in August, 2015, to explore the application of “Industrie 4.0” in the Baosteel Shanghai site as a pilot site. A “Strategic Agreement for Intelligent Manufacturing (Industrie 4.0)” was signed in June 2016 under the presence of China’s and Germany’s prime ministers. In this regard, the collaboration has become a best practice for connecting Germany’s “Industrie 4.0” with the “Made in China 2025” initiative and a benchmark for an Intelligent Manufacturing standard in China’s Iron & Steel industry.
