TXI Chaparral Steel recently completed an upgrade of the automation system at its Virginia facility.

The company selected AMI to design, specify and implement an integrated, highly reliable automation system for the 800,000 tons per year facility. "Since this is such a large facility, designing and specifying a completely integrated automation configuration proved to be a complex task, and our engineering groups worked very closely with TXI Chaparral to make sure that everyone would be happy with the solution," says Bernardo Sainz, who was the Engineering Manager with AMI on the project.

After a thorough review of available solutions, AMI and TXI Chaparral decided to install Series 90^(TM)-70 and Series 90-30 PLCs, Genius^(R) I/O and CIMPLICITY^(R) human machine interface (HMI) software from GE Fanuc Automation, a unit of GE Infrastructure. Features of this package included high reliability and tight integration with GE drive systems.

From melting to shipping, all of the plant's processes and equipment are controlled using intelligent I/O communicating with the PLCs and drives via a Genius LAN. Information from the control system is sent via Ethernet to the HMI software running on terminals located throughout the facility.

"With our plant-wide system, we've enhanced reliability and flexibility, including the ease with which we can configure programs and the ability to troubleshoot either over the network or at a specific I/O block," says David Quesenberry, Automation Manager for TXI Chaparral Steel. "We have built in ways to get real time savings through the system — for example, we make changes off-line and then download them to the system so that the I/O configuration can be changed without shutting down production."

Quesenberry adds, "We built such a close visual representation of our process that any new operator could come in not knowing what we do and quickly have a good idea of what goes on in this plant and where every piece of equipment is located - which has been a great savings on training and improved operator response."

For enterprise-wide communication, the team is capturing and transmitting all of the plant data to TXI Chaparral's business information systems. Quesenberry is performing tests now on GE Fanuc's data historian — Proficy^(TM) Historian — which collects, archives and distributes plant floor process information at extremely high speeds in real time. Scalable to 100,000 data points per server, the system delivers high-volume data collection and retrieval, which can afford TXI Chaparral greater visibility into manufacturing operations in order to analyze and improve both performance and bottom line even more.

Since becoming operational, TXI Chaparral has realized numerous benefits at the Virginia mill as a result of automating the plant. Most notably, high reliability helps to enable TXI Chaparral to manufacture and ship its processed steel on time. Because the system is so easy to use, operator learning curves—and training costs—have been greatly reduced. With common components throughout the system, the company has reduced spare parts inventories and their associated costs.