Product category:
Rolling mills and equipment
News Release from: i2 Technologies | Subject: I2 Product Planner
Edited by the Manufacturingtalk Editorial
Team on 05 April 2005
Steelmaker improves planning and
scheduling
A producer of flat-rolled and corrugated steel has implemented software designed to enable business agility, to help enhance its customer service and business processes.
In the intensely competitive global steel industry, companies must employ updated technology to remain successful Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel Corporation, a producer of flat-rolled and corrugated steel, implemented solutions from i2 Technologies, a leading provider of demand-driven solutions designed to enable business agility, to help enhance its customer service and business processes
This article was originally published on Manufacturingtalk on 8 Oct 2004 at 8.00am (UK)
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Prior to implementing i2 solutions, Wheeling-Pittsburgh was leveraging a homegrown set of manual tools.
Today the company uses i2 Factory Planner and Scheduler to improve its planning, scheduling and material assignment processes.
The steelmaker reports that as a result of the implementation of i2 solutions, it has realised improved on-time orders and standardised processes across its plants.
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The company can now generate reports each day that show the progress each facility is making against plans generated by i2 Factory Planner.
This enables facility employees to focus on completing operations necessary to getting products to customers on time.
Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel reports that as a result, it has seen a substantial improvement in the on-time delivery by individual facilities.
"Steel is different, and it has a level of uniqueness that makes it difficult to use standard ERP-type solutions," said Jeffrey Hoffman, director of Systems Integration, Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel.
"We found that Factory Planner was not only a powerful modelling tool, but also very well suited for the steel industry.
ERP is driven by parts, but steel is a made-to-order product.
Because of i2's origins in the steel industry, their product is heavily endowed with attributes that work in our environment." Since 1995, Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel has been using Factory Planner to run models that produce daily requirements for all of its plants.
That information from the models is fed into the company's scheduling systems.
The scheduling systems tie into the inventory information, facilitating planning of the day's production runs.
When the attribute capture for a customer order is completed, it is fed automatically into Product Planner to finalize the manufacturing specifications, testing requirements, route and generate the cost for the order.
The system calculates profit margins for each order at the time the price is determined.
In the future, Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel intends to tie i2 Product Planner into its order entry systems.
i2 Material Allocator enables Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel to augment existing materials allocation capabilities and also helps the company apply secondary and surplus materials to incoming customer orders.
The company also uses Mill Scheduler in its rolling facilities, starting with hot rolling and running through all of its finishing facilities.
"Working together with metals industry leaders such as Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel, we can share best practices across the industry to enhance customer service and streamline business processes," said Michael Hilbrich, metals industry solution executive, i2.
"In the steel industry it is necessary to synchronize the flow of material through different manufacturing processes, minimize the amount of change from piece to piece to improve quality, and using these solutions, Wheeling Pittsburgh Steel can do just that.
They can configure the solution for use across multiple facilities, eliminate manual scheduling and production material allocation processes and increase mill utilization.
About i2 - i2 is a leading provider of demand-driven supply chain solutions designed to enable business agility.
i2's flexible solutions can synchronize demand and supply across an ever-changing global supply network.
Nineteen of the AMR Research Top 25 global supply chains belong to companies who are i2 customers.
Seven of the Fortune global top 10 are also customers of i2.
Founded in 1988 with a commitment to customer success and supply chain innovation, i2 has a history of delivering value by implementing solutions designed to provide a rapid return on investment.
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