A “5G+smart chemical industry” project jointly developed by Elkem Silicons, China Telecom, Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. and the team of the Bluestar intelligent cloud service won the best recommendation award among 3,731 projects at the national contest of 5G application organized by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, the working group for the promotion of IMT-2020 (5G) and the China Communications Standards Association under the support of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
As a traditional chemical products manufacturer, Elkem Silicons has been taking intelligent manufacturing as the focus of efforts in promoting business transformation and worked to secure a good start in the new round of technological revolution and industrial transformation. Revolving around the task of improving business operation and management, the company has been devoted great energy to intelligence-oriented technological transformation. Steps in going digital have been accelerated and a series of cutting-edge applications and systems have been developed and put into operation, which gives a boost to the high-quality development and performance improvement of the company.
The “5G+smart chemical industry” project has built the first “5G+smart joint laboratory for chemical innovation” in the industry. Providing a platform for companies to develop products, solutions and new applications for high-quality development, the laboratory has attracted companies including China Telecom and Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. Revolving around the strategic goal of promoting business development in a green, delicate, intelligent, international and sustainable manner, the project harnesses the edge of 5G technology and spurs innovative integration of technologies of 5G, artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, cloud computing and big data into chemical products manufacturing. It also aims for new breakthroughs in the application of 5G technology in four areas of safety production, environmental protection, quality production and business operation.
The focus of the phase one project is about applications for safety management. The solution will track the location of staffs and monitor their health status accurately as well as make real-time monitoring on the instrument panel, valves, pipelines and other equipment as well as on staff conducts and equipment environment in hazardous areas from three aspects of staff, equipment and environment, the most important factors in safety management.
Pilot program has shown that the above-mentioned applications for safety management have achieved preliminary results. For example, the “5G +accurate positioning” service improved the accuracy of staff positioning by 300 percent. With the “5G+smart inspection” application, preventive maintenance rate increased 60 percent, and the “5G+visual robot monitoring” application reduced 78 percent of staff’s misconducts. The efforts substantially lowered risks in operation and created lucrative potential incomes for enterprises thanks to improvement in safety management.
In the future, the company will make continued efforts in extending the application of “5G+smart chemical industry” solution to more scenes in quality management, environmental protection and business operation so as to further improve Elkem Silicons’ management and competitiveness, offer more valuable standard solutions to the chemical industry and inject vitalities to the manufacturing sector amid effo