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Supervisory HMI Systems - Opening a window into your process!

The Human-Machine Interface

From Caster to Customer - Shape and Profile historical data

HMI's now store their data directly to SQL databases such as Microsoft SQL or Oracle.

"If you are collecting the right data, and making it available to the right people, you have the ability to make the right decisions."

Your existing plant database can be used to store process data as your caster, hot mill or other milling process, creates it. There is really no longer an excuse not to know why an individual coil has poor shape. If you are collecting the right data, and making it available to the right people, you have the ability to reach correct conclusions. Anything short of this is unacceptable of course.

In the system above, a Microsoft Access database application is being used to view coil profile as it is leaving the hot milling process. The upper panel is displaying the profile in a 3-D format while the lower panel is using a more conventional profile representation. The simplicity, and hence the cost savings in this system is created by using off-the-shelf tools such as Microsoft Access, Crystal Reports and other standard software packages. Very little custom coding goes into creating a world-class data acquisition system you can use for many years.

In the smaller image to the right, a clear indication of a single stuck spray is occurring in a high-speed cold mill.

Monitor complex interrelationships between process variables not usually visualized.  In the screen below, Shape roll rotor pressure is being plotted in real-time along with visual indications of spray nozzle flow rates and control system requests.  In this instance, we are spraying off the edge of the sheet, cooling the workroll and aggravating an existing 'tight-edge' condition.

Hot Mill Historian

Here is a great example of integrating historical data from Wonderware, which is a time-based historian, and a SQL database, which allows tying the production coil numbers to this time-based historical data. Using this type of system, process data for any batch process can be retrieved at 1-second resolution. This data is clearly displaying a feature of the warming hotmill during the first several coils being run off the caster. The cyan colored line is a gap correction signal to the mill showing that significant heating is still occurring during the first 10 coils (or 2.5 hours) of operation. Do your existing mill controls allow you to visualize long-term statistical variation in your process?

   Hot Mill Profile Supervisory System.

The final sheet shape is, to a large extent, determined by the coil profile during the final hot rolling operation. While it is still possible to move a measurable amount of metal in a lateral direction during the initial cold rolling operation, it is not the desired situation to be in. The screen at the right is a full-featured supervisory operator panel for controlling hot mill shape using selective coolant spray application.

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