JP Steel Plantech Co., a steelmaking plant engineering manufacturer (President: Nobuyuki Nada; head office: Yokohama-shi, Kanagawa), has received an order for a temperature measuring sampling robot, S-ROBOT, which is a new product in the “S-Series,” from KYOEI STEEL LTD. for its Hirakata Division. It is scheduled to start operation in August 2020.

S-Series is the general name of the smart products that we have developed with the concept of using AI and IoT technologies to increase the added value of hardware and services of existing products. S-ROBOT is a temperature measuring sampling robot for electric furnaces that can perform the sampling work that has been done manually so far. The probe, which is used for each operation, can be replaced automatically. This helps to promote labor saving and improve safety at the same time. All of the parts for the product to be delivered will be made in Japan, which gives us the advantage of being able to centrally control all maintenance services.

We received this order because KYOEI STEEL is promoting a fully automated furnace front work as one of its measures for work-style reform. We will continue to develop items mainly in the fields of electric furnaces, continuous casting, and steel bar rolling, to achieve factory safety and save labor using robots, improve operation and product quality by using images, AI, and big-data analyses, and provide operation support service based on process analysis. We aim to make systems smarter, such as achieving one-man operation, central integration of operation rooms, which used to be installed at each plant, and remote operation.

Visual explanation: Illustration of S-ROBOT collecting samples with its arm. The probe is automatically replaced.