“Zinifex partnered with Honeywell to migrate its control technology and adopted the next-generation Experion system to help improve efficiency, reliability, safety and process performance. Honeywell had the knowledge, experience and right team to enable our operators to capture data and turn it into usable information to improve performance.”
Dan Courtney, Project Manager, Zinifex
By migrating to Honeywell’s Experion® Process Knowledge System (PKS) operators were armed with the right data that could then be turned into valuable information to make better, faster decisions while also improving performance.
Other benefits made possible by Honeywell’s Experion technology included the following:
Zinifex is one of the world’s largest integrated zinc and lead companies. Based in Melbourne, the company employs approximately 3,500 employees and contractors and owns and operates two mines in Australia and four smelters: two in Australia, one in the United States and another one in the Netherlands.
The mines and two of the smelters supply the growing industrial markets of the Asian-Pacific region, including China. The company’s strategy is to continue its focus on the zinc and lead industries,
“We knew it was time to replace and improve our aging Yokogawa system and investigated several vendors that could provide seamless integration to our device controllers and more importantly get the information we needed to optimise our mine,” said Dan Courtney, Project Manager, Zinifex.
In addition to Experion, Zinifex complimented the control system with other Honeywell products designed for a seamless integrated solution including eServer, for web-based access and DeviceNet for interfacing to the drives.
“We used Experion to integrate the control of the flotation process with the control of more than 140 electric drives done via DeviceNet – something I consider a Honeywell specific expertise,” added Courtney.
By improving the operator’s awareness of conditions and current processes, Zinifex was able to centralise its command center with the ability to share crticial information. “The Honeywell project team was terrific and worked very well with the Zinifex project team during the Project. We now get great service and support via a support services contract so we don’t have to worry about maintenance and day-to-day support,” continued Courtney.
Experion’s extensive custom graphic set using Abnormal Situation Management Consortium (ASM) guidelines is used by the operators to control the plant. Honeywell’s eServer provides the unique capability of enabling and securely managing web-based, casual access to the Experion PKS and delivers these benefits in a single, scalable package offering access for many casual users. eServer ensures high performance and real-time access to plant-centric operational information.
“Honeywell’s commitment to our safety extended beyond the products we implemented. This enabled comprehensive field device diagnostics to be combined with the overall control and safety solution to improve field asset management and elevate both our maintenance and operations,” continued Courtney.
“Honeywell came to us with the entire package that included an extensive set of software applications that captured and shared deep process knowledge for better decision-making and improved business performance, a seamless platform that provided the foundation for integrating all process control and safety systems—including non-Honeywell systems—and automation software under a single, unified architecture with centralised control which became a true competitive differentiator for us,” concluded Courtney.