From ore to steel with zenon - ArcelorMittal Bremen (Germany)

The world steel market grows on average by just under 10 per cent per year, and therefore demand increases accordingly for steel producers like ArcelorMittal. In order for the company to benefit from these positive changes it is all the more important that production should run smoothly and round the clock.

ArcelorMittal is based on a site of around seven square kilometres next to the Weser River in Bremen, where it has been producing steel since 1957. This integrated steelworks includes plants for all production steps from pig-iron production to thin sheet metal. The company produces exclusively sheet-steel products and today includes a blast-furnace plant, an LD steelworks, a continous casting facility, a hot-rolling plant, a cold-rolling plant and two glavanising plants. At present this Bremen steelworks employs 3,600 people, and the production target for the current year is 3.2 million tonnes of steel slabs. In addition to its steelworks in Germany, this international group is represented in more than 60 countries, employing a total workforce of around 310,000.

BREGAL (Bremer Galvanierungs GmbH) was founded in 1993, and belongs to the ArcelorMittal Group. It is responsible for hot-dip galvanising the cold-rolled thin sheet. BREGAL is one of the most modern galvanising plants in the world, and all its products are supplied to the automotive industry.

Since 2003 ArcelorMittal has been converting its steel galvanising plnat step-by-step for visualisation, and zenon is the software it has been using for this purpose. The software that had been used for visualisation on these plants up to 2003 was withdrawn as no successor product was announced. What's more, the repair costs that were incurred as a result of using this software were huge and its design was inflexible - no longer capable of further development and costly to modify. This fell a long way short of the criteria set by the management team at ArcelorMittag Bremen for stability, compatibility and future viability. At the end of a thorough evaluation process Josef Vallant from the electrical maintenance team consulted with his colleagues, and the decision was taken to opt for zenon software.

Files:
SS_Arcelormittal_e_LoRes.pdf