Automation and advanced process control in the cement industry

Globally, industrial plants are seeking to take advantage of disruptive digital technologies as part of a trend known as Industry 4.0. One of the most disruptive of these technologies is automation, as it has the potential to impact the current human operators of industrial plants. Managing the production of cement is one area in which automation can provide real and definable benefits – but only if the relationship between human and machine is well managed. Key to the success of that relationship is the human-machine interface (HMI), such as ABB’s new visual control graphics. The new visual control graphics depart from previous HMIs by displaying process infor- mation intuitively within its situational context in a modern and uncluttered graphical display. Recent application on Cement Mill 3 at CRH Hoghiz plant in Romania saw visual control graphics successfully adopted by operators with plans now to roll it out plantwide.

Author: G. Schuetz

Section: Automation of production

Keywords: plant automation, expert system, Industry 4.0, human-machine interface