“Industry 4.0 is a continued journey and it does not have a limit,” Abdullah Al Maamary, Information Technology Manager for Sohar Aluminium

Holding on to its commitment towards becoming a technology and innovation-driven company, Sohar Aluminium is harnessing the transformational potential of the 4th Industrial Revolution or Industry 4.0 in its quest to position itself as the ‘Smelter of the Future’. Abdullah Al Maamary, Information Technology Manager for Sohar Aluminium, is at the forefront of implementing innovative changes in technology. Abdullah Al MAAMARY has twenty two years’ experience in the industrial sector extending across a broad cross section of functions in the oil and gas, and the metal and mining industries. In his current capacity as Information Technology Manager at Sohar Aluminium LLC., Abdullah integrated strategic IT solutions to support the business needs in a rapidly and constantly changing digital age. These solutions aim to increase productivity while creating value, reducing costs and improving efficiency of the operations. Abdullah holds a bachelor’s degree in science in electrical power engineering from the Glasgow Caledonian College. He is sharing with AlCircle Sohar Aluminium’s journey towards becoming a hub for digitalization, automation, robotics and machine learning. Here is an excerpt from the interview:

AlCircle: What does Industry 4.0 mean to the aluminium industry? How can the implementation of its framework benefit the industry?

Abdullah Al Maamary: The Industry 4.0 transformation of the process industry is a journey to become innovative, flexible, data-driven, and agile organizations. Aluminium Industry has a lot of manual processes that require human intervention and some of them are quite risky. With the Implementation of Industry 4.0., many efforts can be saved and can be done in a safer and more efficient manner.

AlCircle: How has the use of digital techniques changed the aluminium smelting technology?

Abdullah Al Maamary: Many processes have been automated with the use of digital technology, which has helped a lot in increasing the efficiency of the operation, production and safety.

AlCircle: Take us through Sohar Aluminium’s journey from being a Greenfield aluminiumsmelter project in Oman towards becoming the ‘Smelter of the Future’.

Abdullah Al Maamary: Sohar Aluminium smelter started in 2008 with its full operations. And since then many enhancements have been made on the processes, machines and systems in the plant.

AlCircle: What are the elements of Industry 4.0 that Sohar Aluminium has already implemented in its smelter?

Abdullah Al Maamary: Sohar Aluminium has already implemented the following Industry 4.0 elements in its smelter:

1. Self-driving cranes.
2. Smart robotics.
3. OSI PI System implementation which can be used as a foundation for the Industry 4.0 (Digital Twin, Machine Learning, Predictive Maintenance …etc.). 4. OSI Pivision on mobile tablets to provide real time data visibility to analysts anytime and anywhere.
5. Using Raspberry PI for thin clients.
6. POC for Artificial Intelligence automation modules is currently ongoing.

AlCircle: How has automation and robotics helped in improving efficiency, productivity and safety in your aluminium smelter?

Abdullah Al Maamary: Self-driving cranes used for stacking the anodes and Smart robotics used in Casthouse for constructing ingots bundles without human intervention are examples of fully automated systems in the smelter. The areas in which, these robots work are very risky, dealing with heavy loads and very hot material. After the introduction of these automated cranes, no human intervention is required in those high-risk zones. This contributes a lot in keeping our employees safe which is number one priority for our organization. Moreover, by automating these operations, we have been able to cut down on the level of errors and the reject rate.

AlCircle: How has Internet of Things (IoT) changed the way a plant operates? How does Sohar Aluminium use IoT in its smelting operations?

Abdullah Al Maamary: Most of the systems used in Sohar Aluminium are integrated internally, starting from the shop floor PLCs till ERP systems. Most of the field devices, distributed across the plant like sensors, encoders, etc. are connected to human machine interface systems (HMIs, SCADA, MES and ERP) where the assets and processes can be remotely monitored and controlled anytime and anywhere.

AlCircle: How does Sohar Aluminium plan to implement Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) solutions to improve process control at Sohar Aluminium?

Abdullah Al Maamary: Sohar Aluminium has recently implemented OSI PI System. This solution is going to be the first solution for Digital Twin, Machine Learning, and Predictive Maintenance. A number of vendors were approached to visit Sohar Aluminium and demonstrate their ML, AI and RPA.

AlCircle: Going forward, how is Sohar Aluminium working towards making Industry 4.0 a reality in its plant? What benefits do you see coming with its implementation?

Abdullah Al Maamary: Industry 4.0 is a continued journey and it does not have a limit. Other elements will get explored when the business opportunities are raised and will be implemented whenever value or return to the business is proven.