Last year, POSCO-Thainox announced an ambitious business plan to increase annual capacity for cold-rolled stainless steel over the next four years from 200,000 tons to 300,000 tons. POSCO has contracted GE’s Energy Management Services business to upgrade their facilities with minimal interruption to their current production lines. This contract follows GE’s recent work with POSCO-Thainox on their bright annealing line that was commissioned this May.
GE agreed to a fast turnaround of 12 days for upgrading the automation and drives on the final annealing and pickling line at the POSCO-Thainox plant. GE is responsible for the upgrade project, including hiring and supervision of local subcontractors. Commissioning is scheduled for early next year.
Several drives and software packages will be installed to revamp the drive and automation part. The software also will be used for revamping the human machine interface. The new HPCi controllers being used in the upgrade are based on a common standard hardware, making them virtually obsolescence-proof, and will use GE’s own P80i software, which is specially designed for automation and drives control.
