At 11:30 on October 16, the hot commissioning of the 3,800 mm wide and thick plate production line project of Guangxi Iron & Steel Group Co., Ltd. succeeded at the first effort, producing 60 mm and 30 mm steel plates with favorable indexes including surface quality and dimensional accuracy. MCC Capital Engineering & Research Incorporation Limited ("CERI") is the EPS general contractor of the Project.

CERI is the process equipment set manufacturer and commissioning service provider for the whole 3,800 mm wide and thick plate production line of Guangxi Iron & Steel Group Co., Ltd. It implements mechanical, electrical and hydraulic design, supply, installation guidance and commissioning of the mainline process equipment, mainly including the heating furnace, 3,800 mm rough rolling mill and finishing rolling mill, hot section shear machine, cooling bed, double-side shear machine, cut-to-length shear machine, as well as supporting fluid systems of these equipment, transmission and automation equipment, large instruments, etc. Supported by rich cumulative technologies in thick plates, CERI has applied the latest advanced technologies, including the high-precision wide and thick plate rolling technology, multi-functional quick automatic roll change technology, new high-speed dust removal system with proximity guides, double-side shear and cut-to-length shear technology with extreme energy efficiency, full automation control for the cold zone, high-yield optimized shearing system, and high-performance CERI VFD application. 

With CERI's well-developed quality assurance system, the project management team adopted the machinery manufacturing standards of Japan and Germany as the benchmark, and the Supervision Engineer conducted the quality supervision for the whole manufacturing process of equipment of the entire line. Design and procurement engineers were involved in all execution links of the Project, such as equipment manufacturing, field installation guidance and commissioning services, and achieved several "miracles", i.e. a 289-day rolling mill manufacturing cycle, a 54-day period spent to fulfill installation and hot commissioning of the finishing rolling mill's housing, a 31-day period spent to complete the rolling mill's main drive and automation commissioning, and a 13-hour period spent in the process from the finishing mill's work roll pushing to hot commissioning completion, creating a new construction record of 3,800 mm medium-thick plates in China. 

In the Project, unified functional planning and construction were implemented for processes, equipment, automation, informatization, digitization and intelligence; the concepts of digitalization and intelligence are integrated into the whole process of the plant's design, construction, operation, and maintenance stages. The intelligent centralized control of “one line and two rooms” was realized based on production process characteristics, fulfilling functions such as automatic steel transfer, control of high-precision plate shapes and thicknesses, material performance prediction model, virtualized computer resources, high-precision optimized shearing, and whole-line material tracking. Additionally, a large number of CERI drive devices with independent intellectual property rights were applied to realize a highly-automated and efficient production process with less human involvement, offering a leading intelligent and efficient demonstration line for thick plate production in China. 

CERI is the only full-range comprehensive system supplier capable of providing consultation about and design of medium-thick plate processes as well as whole-line equipment and automation control systems and models in China. It boasts innovative processes and technologies such as the through-type thick plate production line, ultra-long plate rolling process, and angle rolling process.