Systematic Debottlenecking of Steelplant Production Processes

by Chia Wei Min, Yong Siew Wah

Publisher - NatSteel Holdings Pte Ltd,Industrial Practice-Asia Pacific – Kepner-Tregoe

Category - General Novel

A bottleneck is a process in a sequence of processes that tends to constrain the overall capacity from this sequence. Specifically, removing the bottleneck, or debottlenecking, of a steelplant’s production processes will increase the steelplant’s overall capacity. Most importantly, the increase in capacity is commonly realised with minimal investments. This paper covers the major production processes from the scrap melting in the electric arc furnace to billet casting at the continuous casting machine. In NatSteel, the upgrading of the continuous casting machine removed a significant bottleneck in the steelplant. The average casting speed for casting of billets was upgraded from 2.4m/min to 2.9m/min. For this upgrading project, an external consultant, Kepner-Tregoe (KT), was engaged to establish a systematic framework for project management. The thirteen steps project management methodology on project definition, planning to implementation was used. With close cooperation from the commissioning engineers from Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI), consultants from KT and staff from NatSteel, the upgrading project was completed on schedule with no loss time injury.

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