Driving plant network digitalisation with the new Acoem WebPortal

The Challenge

This leading player in the aluminium industry commissioned its first 24/7 online monitoring system within one original plant in 2019 – with a view to replicate it and implement smart manufacturing across its entire operations. The company has invested in thousands of individual pieces of equipment for its upstream operations, including a power plant, but it is in its downstream processes where the cold rolling mills play a critical role. Other assets in its inventory that require precise monitoring include potline cranes, autogenous mills and wire rod mills – which all play a role in aluminium processing across a multitude of sites.

Fast forward to 2022 and the company’s Managing Director announced his mission to digitalise all plants by 2030. Not only did he wish to bring every asset online, but he was also very specific about his requirement to have full oversight over the entire maintenance ecosystem, with the ability to not only identify trends in component wear and tear, but to also have access to data regarding when the maintenance repair was made and by whom.

The Solution

Working closely with the Reliability technical teams from Acoem India and France, Acoem developed a tailored solution for them, customising its newest weapon in data transparency for every level of an organisation. The perfect solution for this established industry player was the newest module in the NESTi4.0 software platform – the fully web-based Acoem WebPortal which is revolutionising how industries connect with and leverage their monitoring data to inform maintenance priorities, trends and cost-saving initiatives.

WebPortal allows you to take the stored local database and replicate it to the corporate site as part of its data mirroring capabilities. This gives senior management an added level of oversight, with the ability to view a single colour-coded screen for real-time information on problematic machinery, but also the ability to visualise what maintenance work has been performed, when and by whom to identify patterns and trends.

Hence the WebPortal is giving the Managing Director and other authorised staff direct access to a visual representation of every machine in every plant in the whole network in one device window. It seamlessly accesses and analyses data from its network of MV-x real-time systems monitoring its critical machinery, but also integrates with other Acoem signature portable, wireless and continuous monitoring instruments, including EAGLE, FALCON and RT-300 vibration and alignment apps. In this case, the ability to continually assess its cold rolling mills for chatter issues with a dedicated chatter monitoring algorithm in place, is a value add and a unique advantage.