Recently, the PLC control system retrofit project for gantry cranes, participated by Lianyungang Port Dongfang Company, successfully passed acceptance. As the first port in the country to initiate this project, the successful acceptance marks a substantial breakthrough in the domestic replacement process of PLC systems for gantry cranes, laying a solid foundation for the subsequent promotion of domestic PLCs in port machinery.
PLC is the “brain” of the gantry crane control system, capable of controlling almost all key functions during crane operation. For a long time, foreign manufacturers have held a significant market share in the PLC systems for port equipment. After electrical failures, delays in spare parts supply have often hindered production. Compared to domestic brands, imported PLCs have longer supply cycles for critical components, higher costs, and technical parameters that cannot be shared, causing many inconveniences for port technology upgrades and production operations.
With the continuous improvement of domestic PLC manufacturers’ technical levels and the increasingly perfect service systems, the time is ripe for retrofitting high-performance domestic PLC systems to break the long-standing monopoly in the foreign industrial control market. To ensure the smooth progress of the project, Dongfang Company gathered skilled elites to form a project technical research team, quickly conducting comprehensive technical research on domestic brands. Through in-depth discussions with professional technicians from multiple manufacturers on PLC logic program control, the retrofit PLC was ensured to maintain a high degree of compatibility with the electrical control systems of on-site equipment.
After nearly a year of research, retrofit, and debugging work, the new domestic electrical control system has stable performance, meeting high standards of integrity, smoothness, and traceability. It has reduced maintenance and spare parts replacement costs by nearly 50%, while further controlling the maintenance cycle, minimizing the impact on production at Dongfang Company, proving that this project has good promotability and replicability in the national port industry.
The successful acceptance of this project is another practical embodiment of Lianyungang Port’s comprehensive implementation of the new development concept, actively serving and integrating into the new development pattern, and learning and implementing the spirit of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party. In the future, Lianyungang Port will continue to insist on taking technological innovation as the primary driving force for enterprise development, continuously building new advantages for high-quality development, and injecting innovative development momentum to achieve “ten million TEUs, a great port in the East.”
