ABB Switzerland Ltd announced today the successful commissioning of their new systems at Indocement’s (PT Indocement Tunggal Prakasa Tbk.) Cirebon plant. The total system included the installation of a fully automatic laboratory for two production lines including sampling stations, sample transport, sample preparation, analyzing equipment and an ABB robot.

The contract represented a major investment by Indocement and also required the extension of existing equipment and systems and upgrading the control management. As well as the latest version of ABB‚s Raw Mix Preparation (RMP) system, installation also included ABB’s Knowledge Manager and Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS).

In their retrofit and upgrade project Indocement wanted to retain their investment in as much of their existing systems as possible while at the same time having capacity for expansion. This combination of needs presented various technical challenges, especially in ensuring that existing systems and newly installed equipment would be compatible and able to communicate seamlessly.

The source materials at Cirebon have a high variability of chemistry and, for example, the sand and clay are used in a widely varying mix. The newly installed RMP has helped to regulate the quality of the product while throughput has also been increased. The controller performance exceeded expectations and can be seen, for instance, in standard deviations from targets that are clearly lower than the specified levels.