(Original title: intelligent transformation of a "black light factory" | high-quality development research line)
Entering the cold rolling workshop of Baosteel is like entering a dark steel jungle - the driving car slides freely in the air by means of navigation command, and accurately lifts and unloads the steel coils. There is no driver and ground personnel, and there is almost no lighting in the whole operation area, only the roar of 24-hour "on duty" machine workers and machines busy working.
Baosteel Co., Ltd. is known as the C008 hot galvanizing intelligent workshop of the cold rolling mill "Black Light Factory". Drawing provided by Baosteel
On May 22, following the "high-quality development research trip" organized by the Publicity Department of the CPC Central Committee, the reporter walked into the "Black Light Factory" of Shanghai Baosteel, located at the mouth of the Yangtze River, and felt the beautiful turn of a traditional industry towards intelligence. Liu Decheng, deputy director of Baosteel Cold Rolling Plant in charge of smart manufacturing, said proudly to media reporters: "In the past three years, we have focused on promoting big data and artificial intelligence, and the 'black light factory' has been equipped with a smarter brain."
In the direction of his finger, there is a bright house in the corner of the "Black Light Factory" - the main control room called "factory brain". In this quiet cabin, three operators sit in front of dozens of screens, flashing the real-time production situation and data analysis of the factory alternately. The production situation of Baosteel Zhanjiang production base thousands of miles away is also clear at a glance. "We have made a rough statistics. Previously, operators had to adjust their operations every three minutes or so in the process of real-time monitoring. After the application of AI main operation, it was OK to intervene once every half an hour, reducing the load of personnel by more than 90%."
Baosteel "Black Light Factory". Drawing provided by Baosteel
The main operation of AI mentioned by Liu Decheng is the eye-catching achievement of Baosteel in actively embracing AI technology wave and daring to innovate in the past three years. In Shanghai, an open and innovative city, stepping on the wave of new technology has been the gene embedded in Baosteel since its birth.
"Baosteel was founded in 1978. In 1990, it produced the first automobile steel plate as a domestic substitute. By 2021, it will become the world's largest supplier of automobile steel plates. Last year, it was the world's first to launch 10 new products. Baosteel was born because of reform and opening up, but also because of reform and opening up. Independent innovation is our eternal pursuit." said Bao Ping, chief engineer of Baosteel's automobile plate technology services.
The production of automobile plate is a category with high process complexity and high technical gold content in steel enterprises. The intellectualization of automobile plate production is a long-term work. Since 2013, Baosteel Cold Rolling has been exploring intelligent production. After 10 years of polishing, Baosteel has established a three-dimensional scene integrating multiple production bases. Through the application and implementation of new technologies, the "Black Light Factory" has improved its labor efficiency by more than 30%. Not only has the production capacity improved, but also the processing cost, energy consumption and comprehensive pollutants per ton of steel have improved significantly.
Baosteel "Black Light Factory". Photographed by Liu Jiming
In recent years, led by cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence, Shanghai has cultivated and formed new quality productivity, prepared and released action plans for humanoid robots and artificial intelligence driven scientific research, and strengthened the layout of artificial intelligence chips and algorithms, multimodal large models, and embodied intelligence. As a traditional and old brand manufacturing enterprise in Shanghai, Baosteel is in the midst of the wave of industrial transformation and technological innovation, actively responding to the high-end, intelligent and green transformation.
However, the entry of AI into the traditional steel manufacturing, which requires the production of high stability and reliability, is a new thing and a great challenge for the entire industry. However, Baosteel people are not afraid of challenges, and are ready to face "new" and "difficult" challenges. "Our goal is not only to reduce the physical load, but also to reduce the heavy mental load, especially in the core production control link of steel manufacturing." Liu Decheng said that through nearly three years of exploration and iteration, Baosteel has found the method and path, successfully realized the AI main operation of the automobile plate production line, and processed more than 800 data and parameters, Predict the change of process parameters in the next 30 minutes, and the AI main operator will directly send the adjusted instructions to the PLC control system to complete the millisecond level real-time control.
Shanghai Baosteel Factory District, located at the mouth of the Yangtze River, has a reputation as an ecological garden factory. Photographed by Liu Jiming
At present, Shanghai is making every effort to promote the digital transformation of the manufacturing industry, focusing on the two "bull noses" of the industrial Internet and smart factories, and has built 3 national benchmark smart factories, 19 demonstration factories, and 111 excellent scenes, making it a "double champion" city of national smart factories and excellent scenes.
Technological innovation and industrial innovation continue. Not long ago, Baosteel and Huawei signed a cooperation agreement in all fields, and the Computing Center has also been launched. "This year is the first year for Baosteel to comprehensively promote the AI strategy, and we have entered the practical stage of the big model. The goal is to achieve 100 scenarios like AI main operations, including AI production line control AI visual recognition, AI intelligent decision-making and other work in different dimensions further improve the ability of surface quality inspection of automobile plates through large models, and maintain Baosteel's leading position in the industry. " Wu Xiaodi, General Manager and Deputy Secretary of the Party Committee of Baosteel, said.
