Steel Mill Alarm

What hap­pens when things go wrong.

19 Novem­ber 2016, The alarm is going off at a steel­works in Poma­laa. It’s late in the after­noon on the island of Sulawe­si in Indone­sia. A pro­tec­tive device of the on-load tap-chang­er has shut down the trans­former for safe­ty rea­sons and pro­duc­tion has come to a stand­still. Now the clock is tick­ing. A solu­tion has to be found with­in one week, oth­er­wise the molten steel will cool down with huge­ly dam­ag­ing con­se­quences for the steel­works.

Discover what has happened in these 5 days


An employ­ee at the steel­works picks up the phone and calls Hen­dra Kur­ni­awan, his con­tact at MR’s Indone­sian sub­sidiary in Jakar­ta, where two ser­vice tech­ni­cians work local­ly.

Because of the time dif­fer­ence, it is cur­rent­ly 8 o’clock on Sun­day morn­ing in Ger­many. Kur­ni­awan from Jakar­ta reports the prob­lem to his col­leagues in Regens­burg. Christoph Zieglschmid, Head of Trou­bleshoot­ing, then con­sults with Andreas Birk, who is respon­si­ble for order pro­cess­ing in the region. The case is imme­di­ate­ly giv­en top pri­or­i­ty.

First, all avail­able infor­ma­tion is checked and ana­lyzed. The cus­tomer has pro­vid­ed a check­list, pho­tos, and audio and video files to help with this process. It quick­ly becomes clear that the dam­age is too great and the prob­lem needs to be resolved on site.

The tap-chang­er spe­cial­ists in Regens­burg and Jakar­ta con­sult with one anoth­er and decide how to pro­ceed. They quick­ly agree that an expe­ri­enced engi­neer from Regens­burg will have to rec­ti­fy the prob­lem on site in order to get pro­duc­tion up and run­ning again.

A short time lat­er, engi­neer Andreas Hart­mann, who is a Tech­ni­cal Spe­cial­ist at MR, is prepar­ing for the task. He works through the mate­r­i­al pro­vid­ed by the cus­tomer, stud­ies the rel­e­vant tech­ni­cal data, and plans his jour­ney. The case con­tain­ing his safe­ty equip­ment is always packed and ready. He now puts togeth­er the tools he will need for the job. He will request spare parts as nec­es­sary, once he has diag­nosed the prob­lem on site.

Mon­day, 10:10 a.m. – take­off from Munich. His jour­ney takes him via Doha and Jakar­ta to Makas­sar, where he is wel­comed by his Indone­sian col­league Hen­dra Kur­ni­awan who will act as his inter­preter and pro­vide the nec­es­sary local knowl­edge. Togeth­er they make their way to Poma­laa at the oth­er end of the island of Sulawe­si.

Wednes­day morn­ing. To avoid los­ing any time, the cus­tomer picks up the spe­cial­ists direct­ly from Poma­laa air­port so they can be tak­en to the steel­works as quick­ly as pos­si­ble. Every­thing required for the secu­ri­ty check at the state-run steel­works has been pre­pared in advance by Andreas Birk in Regens­burg. Copies of Hartmann’s pass­port and visa have already been sub­mit­ted in order to speed up his entry into the works.

In trop­i­cal heat con­di­tions, Hart­mann starts the ini­tial assess­ment. He inspects the steel­works and speaks to the per­son respon­si­ble for the sys­tem on site as well as the trans­former manufacturer’s ser­vice tech­ni­cian, who has also trav­eled to Poma­laa. In cas­es like this, the trans­former man­u­fac­tur­er and MR work hand in hand. He now inspects the trans­former and the VACUTAP® VM® on-load tap-chang­er. The sys­tem is still in the same con­di­tion as it was when it failed, which is the ide­al sit­u­a­tion for Hart­mann. Like a foren­sics expert at the scene of a crime, he gath­ers facts in order to come up with a diag­no­sis. Every dis­rup­tion has its own cause and its own char­ac­ter­is­tics and he has to under­stand what went wrong before he can ini­ti­ate the right steps to solve the prob­lem.

The recon­struc­tion shows that, although there is no indi­ca­tion of a mal­func­tion of the on-load tap-chang­er, it has suf­fered seri­ous con­se­quen­tial dam­age as a crit­i­cal com­po­nent in the trans­former. The scale of the dam­age quick­ly becomes clear – the on-load tap-chang­er can­not be repaired. Although a new tap chang­er needs to be fit­ted in the trans­former, by the time it arrives the molten steel in the fur­nace will have solid­i­fied. Hart­mann there­fore needs to find a cre­ative solu­tion in order to save the cus­tomer from immense down­time costs.

In a ware­house at the steel­works, Hart­mann and the cus­tomer dig out a decom­mis­sioned tap chang­er with the same dimen­sions as the VACUTAP® along with var­i­ous old parts of anoth­er tap chang­er. Hart­mann can use these to impro­vise. His plan is to pre­pare the on-load tap-chang­er so it can con­duct elec­tric­i­ty and there­fore enable the trans­former to oper­ate. Admit­ted­ly, it will then be in a fixed oper­at­ing posi­tion and tap-change oper­a­tions will not be pos­si­ble under load, but at least the steel­works can oper­ate under restrict­ed con­di­tions.

After 10 hours, the makeshift on-load tap-chang­er is ready for oper­a­tion. Hart­mann doc­u­ments pre­cise­ly which parts he has used. He also gives the cus­tomer detailed instruc­tions on how to oper­ate the sys­tem safe­ly in this state.

The spe­cial­ist from the trans­former man­u­fac­tur­er now pre­pares to put the trans­former into oper­a­tion. Hart­mann can head home.


When the trans­former is put into oper­a­tion, ser­vice tech­ni­cian Hen­dra Kur­ni­awan from Rein­hausen Indone­sia is on hand to assist the cus­tomer with the final steps. After tak­ing a num­ber of mea­sure­ments, the tech­ni­cian from the trans­former man­u­fac­tur­er declares that the trans­former is fit for oper­a­tion. The solu­tion has been imple­ment­ed in time – the molten steel has not solid­i­fied.

24 Novem­ber 2016, Mis­sion accom­plished. Thanks to the efforts of the MR ser­vice team, the trans­former can be put into oper­a­tion again. The steel is still molten; the fur­nace is rum­bling and vibrat­ing! Every­thing is going accord­ing to plan. By this time, Andreas Hart­mann is already on the way to his next impor­tant job. Around six weeks lat­er, once the steel­works has made inter­nal pro­vi­sions for the changeover, the new tap chang­er from Regens­burg can be installed. The steel­works can now once again use the trans­former and on-load tap-chang­er as nor­mal. With 107 taps, the sys­tem enables excep­tion­al­ly pre­cise volt­age reg­u­la­tion.


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