Four deployments at a specialty steel plant
The window is fixed before the work begins
Initial situation
At a specialty steel plant in Austria, work was required on several units over a number of years: refractory installation on the AOD converter and the electric arc furnace, repair of an annealing furnace, and lining of the cell covers for the soaking pits. All of these deployments shared one starting point — the shutdown window was fixed before the first hour was worked.
Scope of services
- AOD converter
- Electric arc furnace
- Annealing furnace
- Cell covers
- Shutdown planning
Project data
The task
The date follows the plant's shutdown, not the scope of the work: the crew has to fit the length of the window, not the other way round
An AOD converter and an arc furnace are two different sites with their own rhythm — in a shutdown they still run in parallel
Working as an outside contractor inside a running plant means depending on someone else's logistics: crane, platform, permit, cooling time
An annealing furnace stands still for less time than a melting unit. There, every shift counts double
The SBS approach
Crew size was matched to the window for each deployment: five people for the parallel installation on converter and arc furnace in eight days, three for the annealing furnace repair in five.
The longer installation jobs ran for weeks alongside the plant's own construction department instead of travelling in afresh every week. That saves set-up time and keeps the crew in step with the plant.
The cell covers were lined while the soaking pits themselves stayed in operation. Whatever can be prefabricated is prefabricated, so that the shutdown is only used for fitting.
The same crew was in the plant across all deployments. People who know the installation no longer need briefing — in a shutdown, that is the largest single time saving.
Measurable results
The key figures of the “Four deployments at a specialty steel plant” project
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