The general director of Moskabelmet Group, the head of Energy sector of the Aluminium Association Pavel Moryakov gave a presentation on the subject of "Automation and digitization of an industrial facility. Practical experience and custom developments". The presentation was given during the National Conference on Digitization of Industry 2020. The conference was organized by the Institute of World Economics and Informatization and SKOLKOVO Moscow School of Management.
In his presentation Pavel Moryakov talked on how the processes are automated at Moskabelmet Group and which steps towards digitization the leading company among the Russian plants has already taken. It is worth noting that it is not the first time that Pavel Moryakov has addressed this subject — last year he spoke at the Industry 4.0 flow during the Global Digital Summit.
The main goal of digitization process
As Pavel Moryakov notes, while automation is implemented to improve the efficiency of production, reduce the costs and provide the customer with a lower price and a higher speed of processing the orders, the digitization is implemented primarily in order to enable the transition of the company's processes to the status of being convenient to the customer, so the customer can manage the processes themselves.
"In order to make the right entrance to the digitization, one has to observe three important rules: develop digital strategy which in the end has to express itself as the increase in financial performance; maintain steady progress without making any leaps between the stages; and the most important rule is to always keep it in mind that "the purpose behind everything that you do is to create comfort and happiness for your customer", said the expert.
MAGNETAG identification system
On this day, the general director of Moskabelmet Group for the first time presented a newly designed identification system called MAGNETAG. The new type of cable produced under the brand name Magnetag is equipped with NFC tags that can be read without the need for physical contact. By bringing a smartphone that has a pre-installed application close to a bundle of cables you can access up to date information about the cable product, cable type, its date of production, the length of the cable section and the entire cable line. This offers guaranteed protection from counterfeit cables and enables the customer to manage the customer field information as applied to the arbitrary section of the cable line, where one could enter schematic drawings, the history of the operation in the area and any other important information.
Robots and machine vision
This year Moskabelmet has received its first industrial robotic manipulator Aripix A1 produced by the Russian company called Aripix Robotics. This robot has replaced four workers who performed hard routine operation that was bad for their health – they loaded the metal into the melting furnace.
The robot can significantly speed up the process and ensures that the raw material feed is stable and without interruptions. Aripix A1 can work at temperatures up to +70°С and can move up to 50 tonnes of metal per day. It is also equipped with machine vision cameras that ensure the precision of its grip on the raw material and simplify the process of fine-tuning the robot and training the employees.
The machine vision has also been implemented for other equipment – a total of four units of equipment have been equipped with it. By the end of next year, it is planned to implement machine vision across 12 units of equipment. This will enable further automation of other technological processes. It is planned to bring the number of robots operating in the plant to 4 units.
We invite you to watch the video recording of Pavel Moryakov's presentation that he made during the conference Industrial Digitization 2020 and to read the full text of the report.