Recently, the intelligent warehousing system of the after-acid-rolling warehouse of the Silicon Steel Division of Shougang Co., Ltd. was officially launched. This intelligent warehousing system is the first intelligent warehousing demonstration project independently developed by Shougang.

Intelligent manufacturing is an important trend and core content of the manufacturing industry in the future, as well as an important measure for building a powerful nation and an inevitable choice for building a new competitive advantage under the new normal. In 2016, by virtue of its deep accumulation in the field of automation technology, the first silicon steel cold rolling intelligent factory of the joint-stock company was listed in the application of new mode of intelligent manufacturing by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and became a national-level demonstration project. Intelligent warehousing is an important part of the intelligent factory, including unmanned crane in the warehouse and intelligent warehousing.

The first cold rolling operating area is the main production plant of Shougang Group’s silicon steel products with an annual output of about 1,200,000 tons. Before the intelligent warehousing system was launched, the steel coils in the after-acid-rolling warehouse and the warehouse were handled manually, thus need a lot of labor. As a labor-intensive area, influenced by many aspects such as safety, quality and cost, the logistics management efficiency of steel coils in the warehouse needs urgent improvement. In the design stage of the intelligent warehousing system, R & D personnel carried out repeated argumentation and design with the belief of “Shougang the best, Shougang the most economical, and users the most satisfied.”

Eventually, the final decision was made that the intelligent warehousing system was composed of the management of the intelligent warehouse, the scheduling and control of unmanned overhead crane, the steel coil scanning in the warehouse, collision prevention and coordinate scanning of coil vehicles, safety monitoring in the warehouse, real-time monitoring of crane equipment status and other core subsystems, which were independently completed by Shougang. The system can meet the unmanned overhead crane operation with the steel coils produced on five production lines in the warehouse at the same time go offline and are put in storage, go online and leave the warehouse, are loaded and leave the warehouse and can automatically identify and avoid the dangerous area in the warehouse. Moreover, the system can also completely monitor equipment status. It can monitor the running status of the key equipment of the overhead crane in real time, give alarm instructions to the faulty equipment in a timely manner, provide equipment maintenance advice and greatly reduce the time equipment maintenance personnel use for troubleshooting.

Once determined, the work has to be done rapidly. In January 2017, the first batch of equipment arrived. The joint-stock company completed the installation and commissioning of the first overhead crane in just two months, initially realizing the real-time tracking of information changes of steel coils in the warehouse by intelligent warehousing system and the control of the automatic operation of the single overhead crane by the overhead crane scheduling system. On July 14, 2017, the intelligent warehousing system first put into service for 24 hours. Two overhead cranes were put into service for automatic operation. During the trial run, according to the actual production pace and requirements, R & D personnel continued to deny the rules of the system for re-design and groped forward. To optimize the system solution, technicians thoroughly learned the production details concerning the platform construction, core architecture, field devices and network communications as a whole and carried out comprehensive design to ensure that the system functions conformed to the actual production. Since the formal launch of the system on December 20, 2017, the system has been automatically put into operation with over 95% success rate. The after-rolling warehouse of the first cold rolling operating area has become a veritable intelligent warehousing demonstration warehouse with informatization, intellectualization, high efficiency, low cost and high degree of automation, showing the charm of “Shougang manufacturing”.