Industry
Steel Industry is one of the industries that need large capital investment for production facilities. All steel companies need to utilize their capital equipment effectively in order to be profitable. Working at full capacity reduces setup costs and increases throughput, but it also leads to large inventories and delays in filling customer orders. Finding ways to maintain full production while meeting customer demand is a constant challenge for the companies in steel industry .
In recent years, the steel industry has been characterized by consolidation, globalization, and cost pressure and the industry continues to change dramatically.
Issues
Steel Industry is a continuous process industry with discrete entities with long production cycles, where the complexity is very high. There are fundamental product and process issues that make the steel industry unique. Traceability must be maintained from the original heat and casting to the end product shipped to the customer.
Rising input costs, including energy prices, are exerting a continuous pressure on steel margins. Due to the constant change in the demand and supply patterns of the global economy, top steel producers strive to gain a competitive advantage by creating a supply chain that can quickly respond to the small market demand variation.
Key challanges for the steel companies are:
- To be able to utilize key assets optimally
- To be able to maximize throughput and productivity, by synchronizing activities and minimizing delays and increasing overall production
- To be able to co-ordinate the multitude of activities occurring in the various workshops within the steel works (blast furnaces, converters, electric ovens, steel refinery stations, continuous flow shops, steel rolls, up to the final cutting stages)
- To be able to optimize inventory investment, including raw materials, WIP, and finished inventories
- To be able to implement very dynamic scheduling rules and through beter scheduling decisions to improve quality and product yields
- To be able to track and synchronize the plan with real events from the shop floor
- To be able to make reliable customer delivery promises
- To be able to improve transportation efficiency
Solution
ICRON solutions support the unique operational requirements of companies that transform material through melting, casting, rolling, forging, drawing, annealing, slitting, extruding, stranding, or cabling to produce product.
ICRON’s planning and scheduling technology can help to improve every aspect of your production process from increased throughput to higher machine-utilization rates . Implementing ICRON APS is to better synchronize material flow and to schedule production optimally.
The solution is also enables decision making support by providing insight into causes of late orders, analysis of shipping estimates and consideration of detailed scheduling constraints.