ArcelorMittal production philosophy
ArcelorMittal is the world’s leading steel and mining company. Guided by a philosophy to produce safe, sustainable steel, it is the leading supplier of quality steel products in all major markets including automotive, construction, household appliances and packaging. ArcelorMittal is present in 60 countries and has an industrial footprint in 18.
Monitoring hard-to-reach assets
ArcelorMittal’s rotating assets often operate in harsh environments. A conveyor at the company’s hot strip mill in Ghent, Belgium moves plates of sizzling hot steel along the production process. In conditions like these, traditional proximity-based technologies like vibration and acoustic analysis fail: the sensors can’t handle the high temperatures.
In the steel industry, assets frequently operate in conditions that are not hospitable to sensitive sensor technologies. The conveyors at our hot strip mill are a critical part of the production process, but it’s virtually impossible to use manual or vibration-based techniques to assess their condition.
Andy Roegis, industrial digitalization manager for northern Europe
Leading the way to digitalization in the steel industry
ArcelorMittal is at the forefront of digitalization in the steel industry, so the company was looking for a smart solution that harnessed the power of artificial intelligence and the industrial internet of things to generate data-driven insights. “We needed a cost-effective way to improve reliability on these hard-to-monitor assets,” Roegis says. “We were looking for a real-time solution that could give us long-term insight into our conveyors’ health, performance and energy consumption.” ArcelorMittal found what it was looking for in SAM4. “Instead of needing to be placed on the asset in the field, SAM4 installs inside the motor control cabinet, out of harm’s way,” Roegis says. “And its advanced analytics were just what we needed.”
SAM4 is a plug-and-play condition monitoring solution that installs inside the motor control cabinet, not on the asset in the field. High-frequency sensors monitor current and voltage 24/7; advanced AI-based analytics turn the electrical data into detailed information about the condition of the connected asset.
An online dashboard presents actionable insights that help users prevent unplanned downtime, reduce energy use, and improve operational safety and reliability.
It took four weeks to develop the individual models for the assets
Once SAM4’s IoT hardware was installed, the system began collecting data. It took about four weeks to develop individual models for the monitored assets via an automated learning cycle. Once the learning stage was completed, SAM4 was ready to detect upcoming failures around the clock.
SAM4 installs inside the motor control cabinet, out of harm’s way.
Andy Roegis, industrial digitalization manager for northern Europe
12 developing faults detected in 12 months
SAM4 eliminated unplanned downtime for the assets it monitored. During the 12-month pilot, SAM4 detected 12 developing faults in the motors driving ArcelorMittal’s hot-strip conveyors, all of which were confirmed by the mill’s maintenance engineers. “SAM4 gave us precisely the insights we needed,” says Roegis. “Up to 4 months in advance, in some cases. That enabled us to schedule maintenance at the optimal time.” Based on these initial results, ArcelorMittal rolled SAM4 out to 56 critical runout table rollers in Ghent. SAM4 has since detected an additional 27 failures—some up to 7 months in advance—
which the mill estimates saved them 31 hours of downtime.
ArcelorMittal plans to expand use of SAM4 to monitor hard-to-reach assets
ArcelorMittal plans to further expand its use of SAM4. “We’re a forward-looking company, always looking for ways to improve the safety, reliability and sustainability of our production processes,” says Roegis. “Samotics has proven itself a valuable partner there. Thanks to SAM4, we can monitor assets that would otherwise remain unreachable.”
SAM4 gave us precisely the insights we needed.
Andy Roegis, industrial digitalization manager for northern Europe
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