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Circular redundancy safeguards steel production at Ferriere Nord SpA (Italy)
As far as high-quality rolled steel is concerned, the steel producer Ferriere Nord SpA sets great store by dependable production processes, regulated safety and high availability in its plants. The company is a steel producer based in northern Italy, and it has carried out an ambitious project to create state of the art automation systems. For the purpose of process control the company opted for COPA-DATA and its zenon visualisation system. zenon’s circular redundancy ensures that data is acquired continuously, thus ensuring reliable production. zenon has also enabled plenty of long-term aspirations to be realised, and functions that were lacking in the past have now been easily added on.
The Pittini Group has been part of the history of the steel industry in Italy for generations. The largest company in the Group, Ferriere Nord SpA, is based in Osoppo in northern Italy. It comprises an electric steel plant, a wire rolling mill, a rod rolling mill and production facilities for reinforcement steel meshes and grid fencing for the construction industry. All the steel products it produces are first-rate in terms of elasticity and safety standards. They are ideally suited to applications where high quality is a requirement, such as construction of roads and houses.
Ferriere Nord's previous control system did not operate reliably. Furthermore, maintenance tasks carried out from a PC frequently resulted in lengthy downtime for the plant, and if the server failed, data would inevitably be lost. The highest priority for managers on the technical side at Ferriere Nord was to significantly increase availability of the production plant. The aim was for the new system to make secure data available to users at all times without having to double the number of computers. This was where zenon, with its circular redundancy, entered the frame.
