NZ Steel

Shutting down a steel plant for essential maintenance is a bit like turning round the Queen Mary – but a lot more complex. It’s also very expensive. Previously, NZ Steel used to rely on a combination of hands-on experience backed up by written procedures. But what if you could run a virtual shut-down procedure step by step, using animations, so that the whole team could talk through the issues in advance?

Recently, NZ Steel did just that for a planned shut-down of the iron plant at their Glenbrook site. The biggest cost of a shut-down is in lost production, so every hour of downtime saved means a saving of thousands of dollars. The pilot used 3-D animations to show how particular procedures should be done, enabling the maintenance team to agree exactly how they would approach the various tasks. According to the Maintenance Manager, the development cost of the pilot has already been covered by the time saved.

Turning plant assets into 3-D images is the work of an on-site development team using software tools developed by New Zealand company Right Hemisphere, supported by Nextspace Ltd. The NZ Steel vision is to develop a virtual plant with dynamic links to manuals, simulations, drawings, photos, and videos – just as though you were walking through the plant, with immediate access to whatever information you needed. The virtual plant portal will show not only static 3-D objects, but can turn maintenance procedures into videos that can be viewed on hand-held devices by technicians on the plant floor. Knowing exactly what you have and where it is makes both operation and maintenance more cost-effective, giving the company a significant productivity boost.