Improving the efficiency of tippling and ship loading plants at Ghana Bauxite Company Limited, Takoradi Port facility using supervisory control and data acquisition system

Abstract

Plant automation is a necessity today in most industrial settings if a company should remain competitive and achieve optimal time to market delivery of product. In this research, focus is given to the tippling and ship loading plants which hitherto are operated using traditional mimic and operating panels making use of a total of eighteen personnel. To make gains on reduced number of operators, higher plant availability and reduced operational cost, the two plants have been automated using RS Logix 5000 Allen Bradley PLC for effective sequencing of operations and InTouch Wonderware SCADA software for human machine interface development. Results of the SCADA automation gave 50% reduction in manpower requirement, availability increased from 40.34% to 92.83% for the tippling plant all resulting in plant efficiency of 74.27% from 32.27%. Similar results for the ship loading plant stood at 66.7% reduction in operators, 61.08% from 1.30% availability giving the efficiency of 48.87% from 1.04%. The tippling plant, however, could not stand viable for a 5-year operation period when interest on loan stands at 32% or more. The ship loading plant is feasible for the amortisation period of 5 years at same interest rate of 32%. SCADA is hereby recommended for the automation of the two plants to gain a competitive advantage.