Metal & Fabrication

ArcelorMittal Sheffield Ltd is the UK based manufacturer of EstateWIRE, the UK and Ireland's leading brand in agricultural and industrial fencing. Their range of longer lasting steel fencing is used by farmers, land owners, estate managers and facilities managers across agriculture, road, rail, rivers, schools, airports and high security facilities.
To drive production efficiency and eliminate manual data collection the company has installed a PlantRun system on fourteen machines making Field Fence, Barbed Wire and Chainlink branded fencing.

The company chose PlantRun DTM04 Outstations as the operator interface at each machine. This is a unique low cost compact and rugged terminal that allows staff to interact with the system without leaving the production area. Interactions include operator login, product selection, scrap entry, downtime reason entry, request assistance etc. Operators can also view their current shift performance from the Outstation display.

Signals from sensors on each machine connect directly in to each Outstation making installation very straightforward. The system continuously monitors the signals to determine machine speeds and to alert when running slow. Materials usage is calculated in real-time as units, length or weight etc. Scrap product can be entered in relevant units.

All downtime is recorded, either as a short or micro stop, with no reason required, or long stoppage with reason selected by the operator. The time threshold between short and long stoppage can be set per machine and the Outstation can disable the machine from being restarted until a reason for downtime is entered. Pareto analysis of all downtime over any period quickly identifies where action needs to be taken to reduce production losses and improve OEE.

Outstations are fitted with both barcode scanners and RFID readers for fast and accurate entry of product/job/works order information and operator logon and logoff.

A range of optional functionality was provided including:

• Operator Checklists – pre-production health & safety checklist questions on Outstations.
• Slow Speed Running Reasons – ability to select from reasons for why a machine is running slow.
• Scrap Tracking Reasons – ability to select from reasons for poor quality product.
• Response Time Tracking – allows operators to request assistance. Tracks the response and resolution time.
• SMS Text Messaging – sends assistance requests via text message directly to mobile phones
• Emailing and Automatic Reports – alerts sent by email and reports generated at timed intervals

Reporting and analysis tools are built in or data can be exported. All data is processed in real-time by an industrially rugged PC server with SQL database. This means that live accurate production information including OEE is available on PC, laptop, tablet, smartphone, large screen TV displays etc eliminating the need for any paper form filling.

PlantRun has been integrated with the existing ERP system to enable seamless data exchange for true paperless manufacturing.

All PlantRun systems are supplied pre-populated with all customer data including Operator ID, product ID, shift patterns, downtime reasons etc. so the system works as designed from switch on with no on-site programming needed. Day to day changes to operator, product, downtime reasons, shifts etc. are straight forward to do as and when required.

As PlantRun systems are also designed to be straight forward to install. This enabled installation to be undertaken by the customers own engineering staff, with remote support from PlantRun engineers, minimising cost and disturbance to production.

ArcelorMittal Sheffield Ltd is part of the WireSolutions division of ArcelorMittal, the largest manufacturer of steel in the world.