Digital Twin and IIoT in Optimizing Manufacturing Process and Quality Management
Consequently , the need for traceability of product quality in its full production lifecycle is also stronger .
Fig . 2-2 : Steelmaking secondary production processes . 2.2 Achievement and Challenges in Digital Systems in the Steel Industry
For the past few decades , steelmaking , like many other continuous process heavy industries , has been highly automated at the equipment level ( ISA-95 level 1 and 2 ). PLCs and SCADA systems are widely used to control and monitor the production processes . In the recent decades , the steel industry has also invested in establishing various IT application systems managing one or other aspects of productions such as production planning and execution ( manufacturing execution system – MES ), production process control management system , quality management system ( QMS ), equipment management system , all belonging to at the ISA-95 level 3 . Today , the steel industry at large is operating based on these systems that have significantly contributed to the increase of productivity , improvement in product quality and reduction of production cost .
However , a number of major technical challenges remain :
• At ISA-95 Level 1 and 2 : Many PLCs often remain unconnected to higher level systems , so it is impossible to collect data from them . For PLCs that have been connected to SCADA systems , it is often that the SCADA systems remain isolated so the data that have been collected or alerts that have been generated can only be viewed locally using associated HMIs . Data and alerts in one SCADA system cannot be readily used to correlate or
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