Case
Steel industry - SAP implementation project
Many of our projects address critical and strategic issues for our customers who, therefore, choose to not disclose their name”.
Environment
The client is a steel company that produces some 2 millions tons of slabs* per year. The production process is based on a blast furnace** and a steel melting shop ended with a continuous caster. Sold by his shareholders to a large steel group, the client had to implement a completely independent information system in just a couple of months. This ambitious project aimed at replacing both the maintenance and the commercial application while implementing a production management system integrated with the controlling functionnalities. The client’s choice went for SAP software, in line with the financial system that was already running on the same software.
Solution
Trasys started the project by making a blueprint followed by an analysis of the architectural requirements. Some of the latter typically addressed the production management system that must be integrated with the process control, the maintenance management system to be integrated with the clock-in clock-out devices used by the subcontractors, and the commercial system requiring the use of portable devices to record the details of the expeditions. The second phase of the project involved the selection of the maintenance data from the history and the definition of the production orders.
Because of the variable size of a slab, Trasys proposed to use the product configurator designed to define variable size products and manage the number of possible grades in an easy way. After a huge test phase, the new system went life exactly within the required timeframe. Fully integrated with the controlling and the financial systems, it provides specific functionality for interacting with the production system, the clock-in/clock-out system to manage the subcontractors, the web-based shipping application to record the exact shipment on trains, and customer applications to give them the detailed shipment (including production data) of their orders.
Benefits
The whole system put in place offers several benefits in terms of improved production control in one hand, and better management of the subcontractors in the other hand. Also, customer service has been drastically enhanced thanks to the full interaction between expedition and customers, based on real-time production data.
* Slab: A semi-finished steel product obtained by rolling ingots on a rolling mill or processed through a continuous caster and cut into various lengths. The slab has a rectangular cross section and is used as a starting material in the production process of flat products
** Blast furnace: A furnace used in integrated steelmaking in which coke and iron ore react together under a hot air flow to form liquid hot metal, also called pig iron.