İlten Karadağ
Process Industries Division
Sales Manager
ABB
Would you please firstly give us a briefing on ABB’s organization in Turkey?
ABB (ABBN: SIX Swiss Ex) is a leading global technology company that energizes the transformation of society and industry to achieve a more productive, sustainable future. By connecting software to its electrification, robotics, automation and motion portfolio, ABB pushes the boundaries of technology to drive performance to new levels.
It provides services in four main business areas in Turkey as well: Electrification, Process Automation, Motion, Robotics & Discrete Automation.
As Process Automation, Process Industries Division, we provide turnkey solutions to cement, mining, pulp & paper, iron and steel, aluminum, metals, data center, food & beverage industries also by using the products from other divisions and including the engineering and process knowledge.
What is the position of ABB Turkey in the global ABB?
ABB Turkey takes a globally important part in production of low and medium voltage switchgears. Our factories, which are not only in Turkey, provide services to numerous countries. We get out strength from being in operation in four business areas in compliance with the global structure.
What are the solutions of Process Industries Division intended for the cement sector? What are your advantages from such specific solutions for the sector?
ABB Turkey Process Industries team has been serving to customers locally for about 23 years. Except for the cement and mining sectors, we can get support from our COE centers abroad for specific applications in certain projects, but we are able to serve locally to all customers in the cement and mining sector. This is not only in automation, but also covers designing of grids, medium and low voltage systems, MCC and main distribution panels, as well as choosing motor, drive, and field instruments, project management, and field installations, and even, field installation materials. Therefore, I would like to emphasize once more that we provide turnkey solutions.
As of 2014, we, as ABB Turkey Process Industries Division, are in a position to follow cement projects of 15-16 countries around Turkey. Our greatest strength at this point is local know-how. The factories engineered by Turkish engineers are remarkable in terms of engineering: Now, the world prefers our engineers. Although being a foreign-partnered company, ABB provides substantial amount of foreign currency input to Turkey as an export company operating in the electricity market in the country.
To be more specific about the automation systems, I may say that the importance of effective role of automation in the processes from raw material input to sales and supply nowadays have been better understood. At the same time, it is also important that management of sub control systems should include production processes and optimization algorithms. We produce our software unique for the sector by utilizing Minerals Library, which ABB has developed specifically for the cement sector. That is to say; wherever in the world, if cement factory software is produced by utilization of this library, a Japanese, Turkish, or American engineer could come and provide engineering services to such cement factory. This library is composed of object-based software control and energy management application productively and in an entirely parameterized manner at the same time. Thus, customers have the opportunity to operate and continue their production process and asset management in the most efficient way. Minerals Library is used at more than 600 cement and mining factories in the world. In addition to the instrumentation, the equipments can be monitored and intervened via Asset Management systems via DCS in the plant.
Instead of controlling independent equipments and systems supplied by different suppliers over separate control systems, it is great advantage to integrate and control this automation islands over only one center. ABB integrates all these processes and adds value to the companies they work with. These processes that we cover in the scope of ABB Ability™ platform may be considered fully compatible integration with energy efficiency, production increase and optimization, reducing downtime, business and asset management, ERP systems in factories by utilization of Level 3 softwares. Furthermore, the collaboration of ABB with Microsoft Azure provides a cloud platform support by means of which one can easily integrate around the world.
At this point, I would like to talk about the most important innovation we provided to the sector: Knowledge Manager and Expert Optimizer that we refer to as CPM (Collaborative Production Management) softwares. These are tools that will increase energy and managerial efficiency of the cement industry. Knowledge Manager software ensures executives can access instantly to the KPI values of many cement factories. By utilization of this software, you may see how much energy your factory transiently consumes, how much transient production you accomplish, which alternative fuels or minerals you use, and your profitability at any instant. In present day, competition is actually very high, and there is a serious competition in every field. In the cement industry, profit per ton is about one Dollar. It is very vital to act in consideration of your instant cost and the efficiency of your factory. By utilization of Knowledge Manager software, the status of a factory and where it is headed can be displayed clearly. This software is currently used in many factories in Turkey.
Another function of Knowledge Manager software is the quality control system which we call LIMS (Laboratory Information Management System). In this way, the laboratory and production work in an integrated manner, enabling you to produce the most efficient products.
The other sector specific software is Expert Optimizer. This software has a direct effect on the energy efficiency of a cement factory. It is special software that can handle the entire process from mine to crusher, from crusher to raw mill, from furnace and crusher mill, even to cooler, from cooler to cement mills. There are a few of similar software in the world; however, other supplier companies evaluate cement process in parts – whereas our software covers entire factory from beginning to the end.
Another special software developed for the cement sector is RMP (Raw Mix Preparation). The function of this software is to decide how raw materials affecting cement quality should come from weighbridges.
Another solution is AssetVista. AssetVista, is a maintenancebased solution that is adaptable for each factory and developed for monitoring and analyzing the status of assets in the factory.
AssetVista combines a site-specific configuration with seamless integration and long-term continuous improvement support to provide you with a complete package to optimize maintenance activities. With that respect, it provides all relevant data in a userfriendly, real-time dashboard, as well as detailed reports printed on demand.
The software and control system solution I talked about earlier are within the scope of our digital platform ABB Ability™. If we mention once again shortly about our major solutions for the cement sector:
• ABB can provide ABB Ability™ System 800xA DCS (Distributed Control System), which integrates control, electrical and communication systems for optimal visibility into all processes for stable production and the efficient use of raw materials and energy, together with ABB Ability™ Knowledge Manager and ABB Ability™ Expert Optimizer integrated with the DCS, as well as communication and electrical system infrastructure and equipment.
• ABB Ability™ Expert Optimizer leverages Advanced Process Control Technologies to manage critical plant components, including kiln, alternative fuels, mills, and blending. It constantly pushes plant constraints to maximize yield and throughput whilst minimizing operating costs such as fuel and electricity.
• ABB Ability™ Knowledge Manager is a digital solution which provides visualization of plant data for increased efficiency. It processes a large amount of data to provide operators with the right information at the right time via web and mobile interfaces.
• ABB Ability AssetVista™ provides predictive asset management, maintainability, and decision-making support by real-time monitoring of the assets in a plant.
Furthermore, we also have various service solutions under ABB Ability™ platform, helping us to provide service support for our products and solutions.
You have announced a new platform called ABB Ability™ Genix. Can you talk a little bit about this new platform?
This platform can be summarized as the services that connect operational data with engineering and IT data.
ABB Ability™ Genix Industrial Analytics and AI Suite is a comprehensive yet modular big data analytics and industry AI suite for rapidly deployable industry value applications on an enterprise-grade industrial analytics platform. The suite connects, collects and contextualises data from operational, IT and engineering systems. Driven by analytics, AI and machine learning technologies, the ABB Ability™ Genix Industrial Analytics and AI Suite combines the power of data management, domain knowledge, technology capabilities and implementation expertise.
ABB Ability™ Genix Industrial Analytics and AI Suite is a scalable suite consisting of advanced analytics platform, pre-built easy-touse applications and implementation expertise.
The pre-built industry standards based cognitive data model provides actionable insights for achieving operational performance, asset integrity, energy efficiency, sustainability and safety, leading to improved productivity, quality, optimum utilization of plants and assets, process improvements and cost savings.
Genix provides a powerful digital transformation offering. We will launch new solutions within the scope of ABB AbilityTM Genix in the coming days. We can talk more about these solutions in our future interviews.
In your opinion, what are the features differentiate ABB from other companies?
The most important feature differentiating ABB from other companies is customer satisfaction for our products and systems whatever the costs thereof are, our steadfast devotion in adherence to quality and global ethical principles, engineering strength and know-how, and powerful supply chain. By providing service and support for the projects and systems designed by ABB even after many years, we differentiate ourselves from our competitors. For instance, we have the ability to upgrade our control systems that we established 25 years ago in a short period of time.
ABB Turkey Process Industries Division tries to serve properly and adequately to its customers by designing turnkey projects for the cement and mining industries. This service continues from the very beginning of the project to the end. If a new project is to be carried out, we tell our customers firstly of the importance and scope of the engineering work to be done. Such works, as I mentioned earlier, cover designing, dimensioning of all electrical systems and automation & instrumentation systems at relevant factory, and choosing of appropriate products and solutions. These works include drawing of single lines, layout of electric rooms, determining and drawing cable routes, exact dimensioning motors and drives, etc. Thus, by elaborating our know-how to our customers at the beginning of project, we ensure that they do dimensioning and choosing correctly, and proceed properly.
What privileged services do you provide to the sector producers after sales and commissioning?
As much as installation of a new facility, the services we provide afterward to existing facilities are also important. ABB provides service solutions for all ABB equipment in a facility, by means of a program called “Cement Care”, for spare parts, maintenance contract, 24/7 service, upgrade services, etc. of both new and previously existing facilities. We support our customers in increasing their operational efficiency with quick response, management of equipment life cycle, and performance improvement.
What are the difficulties of working in the cement sector in terms of implementation, project process and products? In addition, what kind of challenging demands you get from end users?
In fact, our team, which has been working for years in the cement sector, is our greatest advantage. Our site managers who we work together in site work, our project managers who manage all processes, our electrification and automation teams make a difference at site. In general, some of these points can change during the project in such big projects. Although these changes are the biggest difficulties, thanks to our experienced team, we are able to take action very quickly and produce solutions. In addition, despite the fact that electrification & automation systems are the final point during commissioning works, we can provide added value to our customers by trying to go one step ahead of the construction and mechanical works with the advantage of working with all the supplier companies and we can recognize the possible faults before they appear.
In conclusion, would you like to add something?
As ABB Turkey Process Industries team, we will continue to provide our customers with such value-added solutions in their existing and future cement investments.
