BlueScope’s engineers are leading a digital shift with Siemens Senseye, ensuring Australia’s biggest steelworks stays competitive – and sustainable – for decades to come.
BlueScope steel runs through the built environment: the bridges we drive across, the stadiums we cheer in, and the cars, farms, homes and packaging that shape everyday life.
With around 14,000 employees worldwide and operations spanning Australia, New Zealand, Asia and North America, BlueScope is a key global player in the steel industry. At its flagship site at Port Kembla, New South Wales, raw materials are transformed into finished products at scale, making efficiency, productivity and sustainability critical.
Global crude steel production remains close to 1.9 billion tonnes annually, and the sector is responsible for around 7 per cent of global energy-related carbon emissions. And with production at this scale unlikely to fall, pressure is mounting to cut the carbon footprint of steelmaking.
At Port Kembla, BlueScope saw an opportunity to take a decisive step in that direction while increasing productivity and efficiency.
Pilot at Port Kembla
Port Kembla Steelworks is the largest manufacturing site in the country and has been producing steel for close to a century. The site employs around 2000 people, with its output supplying both domestic and export markets.
When BlueScope began looking at ways to modernise its asset management, predictive maintenance was the first major step. Colin Robertson, Digital Transformation Manager at BlueScope, said. the choice was deliberate.
“We always had a concept of modernising and introducing new technologies, and when we started looking at what we should do, predictive maintenance was clearly one of the things we wanted to start with,” he said. “From day one, there was full executive support that if this was successful, we would take it across the globe.”
BlueScope chose Siemens’ Senseye Predictive Maintenance platform for its flexibility and AI-driven human–machine interaction. The pilot launched in early 2022 with 300 assets across three metal coating lines.
Chris Wonson, Predictive Maintenance Lead, said. “We chose Senseye over three or four different platforms, and that was mainly around the AI component – the ability to tune it automatically with its ‘thumbs up’ and ‘thumbs down’ feature.”
Within seven months, the pilot was delivering results. BlueScope has since gone on to expand Senseye across its Australian plants, and then to global sites. All up, the company has avoided around 2000 hours of downtime and 53 full process interruptions worldwide – preventing significant waste and lost production.
“The biggest benefit is the reduction in unscheduled delays and therefore increased throughput for the plants,” Colin said.
How Senseye works
BlueScope operates equipment of every age and complexity, from blast furnaces to finishing lines.
“We’ve got the complete array, from the very simple to the latest and most modern equipment,” Chris said. “Everything from bringing in iron ore and raw materials to finished products going out the gate.”
Senseye analyses data such as vibration and pressure to detect early warning signs of equipment failure. At Port Kembla, BlueScope installed IoT vibration sensors on critical assets, filling long-standing gaps in preventive maintenance. Data flows into the platform at regular intervals, allowing anomalies to be flagged long before they cause downtime.
Engineers configure thresholds and control parameters for their specific lines, while Senseye prioritises cases so teams can focus on assets most at risk.
According to Colin, usability has been a crucial factor in BlueScope’s success with Senseye.
“We wanted something that people could use, not something that was going to add to their workload,” he said.
Culture shift through technology
The impact of predictive maintenance at Port Kembla has extended beyond reduced downtime. It has marked a cultural shift in how BlueScope thinks about asset health and digital transformation. Chris said. “The main benefit is seeing machine failure coming and being able to intervene before you experience a catastrophic failure or loss in production,” he said.
It has also improved safety by avoiding risky manual interventions, such as handling steel strips during unplanned stoppages. And because assets are repaired in a less failed state, the overall cost of maintenance has fallen. Colin said.the sustainability benefits are substantial too.
“If we stop the line, we obviously create scrap and we create waste,” he said. “That means we’ve spent energy all the way from the raw materials, through ironmaking, steelmaking, rolling – and then we scrap the steel. That’s not good for energy efficiency, and therefore it’s not good for greenhouse gas emissions”.
For BlueScope, predictive maintenance is now embedded in its decarbonisation and efficiency journey. And the success of Senseye has proven to be a catalyst for changes across the company.
For Chris, it’s also a mission that resonates personally.
“I’m proud to work for this company – I’ve always lived in this area, and I probably always will,” he said. “I want to see these steelworks survive for the next generation to take over and thrive with, and leading the digital transformation is going to give us the best chance of doing that.”
Check out the extended interviews with BlueScope’s Chris Wonson and Colin Robertson on Siemens’ Trend Detection Podcast:
- BlueScope Steel Success Case Deep Dive – with Chris Wonson – 6 November 2024
- Scaling Smarter: How BlueScope Steel Took Senseye Predictive Maintenance Global – 21 May 2025
