ArcelorMittal Europe is investing significantly in digitalisation throughout its business, the steelmaker confirmed at its European media day in Paris attended by Kallanish. This will improve the company’s production quality and services, the ceo of ArcelorMittal Europe Flat Products business division north Wim Van Gerven said.
“Through digitalisation customers’ product needs can be met straight away, for example through the company’s ‘virtual mill’ which connects all flat products’ mills, systems, and order books, to removes all boundaries, whether geographical or technical. The company also intends to achieve the best product quality, through better prediction using advanced analytics made possible through big data and distributed computing. This means production issues can be detected before they happen, allowing the early detection of defects,” the executive added.
Cost efficiency in production and logistics will also be achieved. The company’s R&D sites in Avilés, Spain has developed a technology for line scheduling that has significantly improved productivity. Also the deployment of automated stockyards, linked to line scheduling and transport devices such as autonomous cranes means less stock is needed, and lead times are cut. This gives two major supply chain benefits.
On its production lines supplying the automotive industry, ArcelorMittal uses digital twinning to create a digital fingerprint of a coil that’s scheduled for delivery. Quality defects are marked with a barcode on the coil and linked to a digital twin of the coil in the cloud. Customers can then automatically scan the bar codes when the coil arrives, access the quality data from the cloud and optimise their operations with the knowledge downloaded from the barcode. By knowing where the issues with the coil are in advance, this helps to eliminate waste and optimise productivity for both supplier and customer, the company says.
“2017 has been a milestone year for digitalisation within the company. While the company has had a digital focus for a number of years, benefiting customers in particular, ArcelorMittal is today making major investments, not only in terms of resources but also in time and in management attention, to remain at the forefront of digitalisation in the steel industry”, ArcelorMittal Europe ceo Aditya Mittal concluded.