Aluminium

SA adopts Industry 4.0 tools in earnest

Sohar Aluminium: making advanced technology a priority

A mid rapid technological change across traditional industries, Oman’s Sohar Aluminium (SA) is looking to harness the transformational potential of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (also known as Industry 4.0) to position itself as a ‘smelter of the future’ in the metals sector, the company said.

The company has made advanced technology a priority ever since its formation in 2004, implementing automation and robotics within the smelter’s casthouse operations from the beginning in order to minimise the interaction of human operator with unsafe material handling and therefore the risk of injury. Robotic cranes, for example, assist in the stacking of refined metal bundles and applying labels to them, according to a report in SA’s latest newsletter Tawasul.

Last year, however, the adoption of Industry 4.0 tools began in earnest with members of the core IT team evaluating the applicability of various technologies, engaging with 4.0 technology vendors and also coming up with their own in-house solutions as cost-effective alternatives to vendor-promoted offering.

 

10 YEARS OF ACHIEVEMENTS

Sohar Aluminium was established as the first greenfield aluminium smelter project in Oman. This was the Sultanate’s first step to build a solid platform for rapid and sustained growth in this industry as a key initiative to diversify the nation’s economic resources and boost growth. Today, 10 years since it started operation, the company plays an important role in the future of the aluminium industry in the Gulf region and in promoting Oman as a strategic hub for investment. The smelter has produced around 3.7M metric tonnes of finished product, it said.

SA has a dedicated power plant with a total design capacity of 1,000 MW and a dedicated port facility at the Port of Sohar which handles vessels with a capacity of around 75,000 metric tonnes. Through implementing In-Country Value objectives, SA reached its goal of supplying 60 per cent of its production as molten metal to local downstream industries, and on average, the company buys 58 per cent of its goods and services locally - excluding raw materials.

The smelter workforce is now 76 per cent Omani, a rate that was achieved through providing job opportunities, training and developing nationals in order to maintain productivity effectiveness while ensuring a quality-driven mindset, creating a safe and healthy working environment, protecting the environment and maximizing the positive impact in the community.

The company recently celebrated its 10 years of achievements. It also unveiled its 10th annual Sustainability Report.

 

CASTHOUSE’S FURNACES’

Meanwhile, after ten years in operation, SA’s Casthouse sought technical assistance from its shareholder Rio Tinto to conduct a complete holding furnaces’ assessment. In March 2018, this assessment was realised by the Rio Tinto refractory specialist in collaboration with SA representative. Considering their conditions, it was decided to execute a complete furnaces’ relining within a year, one at a time. To see this project through and as per the set deadlines, the Casthouse was operating with only three furnaces for more than 200 days, which is the period required to complete the full relining of the four furnaces.

“During that period, the execution team faced several challenges including maintaining zero harm, managing the access and coactivity to the working area (workforce, equipment, relining refractory, PPE requirement), maintaining the metal delivery drumbeat in coordination with the Reduction department and sticking to the shutdown duration for each furnace,” the report said.

A total of 123,600 man working hours were allocated to the relining. Daily meetings to maximise the communication’s effectiveness, partnership works between the relining team (SA and Contractors) and the management involvement were the key factors for the success of this project, it said.

By adhering to this strategy, the Casthouse holding furnaces relining project was completed safely and without impacting the Casthouse operation.

 

FOCUS ON DOWNSTREAM

The year 2019 has been a very exciting year for SA’s one of the downstream customers - Oman Aluminium Rolling Company (OARC) as sales growth and deliveries are pushing the company to finish the year at plant nameplate capacity, it said.

In 2018 OARC shipped 94,645 net tonnes; equivalent to total shipped volume since the company’s inception. Putting the prior four years of operations into a single year was no small feat and could not have been accomplished without the hard work of all the employees, the company saidin its latest Tawasul.

During 2018, OARC made a step-change in attracting new customers and bolstered its position in the aluminum flat rolled industry worldwide. The success in developing new alloys was one of the major triumphs in OARC’s transformation phase. “We have greatly expanded our product mix in a very short time. The new products have constituted a major share in OARC’s production volume,” SA said.

Throughout 2018, OARC successfully enhanced the capabilities of various critical equipment enabling it to compete with the world’s best suppliers of Fin Stock products. In less than two months, OARC went from developing a new product to mass production of a complex product. “By the end of 2019 we hope to expand the customer base of this product to 10 customers in three different countries,” it said.

OARC will continue to develop new alloys and markets for shipments in 2020 and many of those programmes are in the trial stage now. The company will ship its first materials for use in the automotive sector in Q3 after the alloy development is completed.

While production has increased dramatically, the company must maintain its quality commitments to its customers.

Therefore, OARC has developed and implemented their companywide Integrated Management System (IMS) and obtained ISO 9001:2015, ISO 14001:2015 and ISO 45001:2018.

“We are nearly complete with the next 3 ISO standards we have targeted before we move onto the complex Automotive ISO/TS-16949 standard. All data is available and auditable through SAP which is completely integrated down to the level 2 shop floor systems. We are the only firm in Oman that runs SAP MII (Manufacturing Integration and Intelligence), a fact we are very proud to promote,” it said.

In order to drive its strategy of increasing production and Omani jobs without significant capital spending, OARC has recently invested in building new annealing furnaces and new melting furnace to keep pace with the increase in sales orders. After commissioning the new melting furnace December 2019, OARC aims to increase total nameplate capacity of the plant from 140k tonnes to 210k tonnes. OARC has successfully executed a tremendous amount of investments while driving transformational change.