The manufacturing scenario has changed a lot since the introduction of technologies. The fourth industrial revolution or Industry 4.0 has made some significant transformations in the way an industry works. To keep up with the ever-changing industrial environment, several manufacturing industries are adopting newer technologies for making their processes more streamlined and high-yielding.
One of the most remarkable transformations Industry 4.0 made was in the Steel Manufacturing Industry. With the integration of state-of-the-art manufacturing technologies such as ERP and IoT, Steel Manufacturing industries are upgrading their existing production methodologies.
Steel industries are one of the heaviest industries. Due to the high supply and demand, massive production scale, and huge inventory, Steel Industries have the most complex and intricate operations. In order to successfully execute every single operation and ensure the best outcome, every process needs to be optimized and monitored with high precision. The unique challenges in the Steel industry have led manufacturers to look for the most beneficial solution to optimize their workflow.
ERP or Enterprise Resource Planning Software is software that can be defined as a set of tools for planning and managing resources efficiently. To manage large businesses, the industry or company must have specific software that allows the management team to control and monitor all operations in an industry. Lighthouse ERP software for steel industry is the best way for a company to gain complete control over its operations and tasks without intervening too much. Lighthouse ERP software automates the process completely, making it simple to manage all resources.
With the revolutionary IoT technology integrator with ERP, Steel industries are restructuring manufacturing by leveraging intelligently connected devices in factories. This has increased the number of opportunities for fine-tuning operations through improved data and process integration.
Due to the massive amount of work and production, Steel manufacturers deal with a lot of data to monitor all the processes. One of the main reasons why Steel Industries lag in productivity is the lack of association between the systems, sources, and analysts. Many times the data is stored in different disconnected sources, and therefore manufacturers cannot analyze the information to make further improvements in production.
Disconnected data also means unorganized processes and unoptimized tasks.
When processes are disconnected, the revenue is impacted negatively due to document processes, and staff spends more of their time on administrative tasks, reducing the ability to plan, forecast, and budget due to a lack of visibility, resulting in decreased business agility and leads to lack of integration in the systems, which has an adverse effect on the quality of the consumer experience.
When it comes to manufacturing, there is only one important factor that consolidates manufacturing processes and makes it possible for industries to integrate all the departments to enhance the process flow and deliver the best results — Connectivity.
Excellent connectivity is critical for acquiring information from the production line to aid in decision-making. This is becoming easier as the internet revolution continues in the new era of Industry 4.0, which provides us with technological advances to automate processes and obtain real-time data.
By virtue of ERP technology incorporated into industrial systems, Steel Industries have achieved massive success in enhancing their output. The quality that makes ERP systems exceptional is that they can get integrated with existing systems and incorporate newer contemporary technologies. One such technology is the IoT or the Internet of Things.
The Internet of Things (IoT) is basically a network of interconnected systems and things such as computers, sensors, machines, and humans.
“With advanced technology coupled with state-of-art tools, the Internet of Things has become something more than just a metaphor — it is a way of living for many industries.“
The BI tool integrated with the Steel Manufacturing ERP software assists industrialists in managing operations and getting a comprehensive overview of the business operations which enables managers in Steel Industries to take data-driven decisions and plan the production work ahead of time.
Steel production is very lengthy and time-consuming. The massive amount of production and complicated production cycle makes it harder to track the activities. ERP integrates all the systems to track the status data of long and timely processes. Furthermore, the IoT tool helps convert the data into powerful information that assists manufacturers in improving the production cycle.
Steel Industries produces thousands of different steel products at the same time as per the supply-demand. Therefore it becomes harder to track all the products simultaneously. The BI tool incorporated in the ERP steel manufacturing software helps in tracking each product individually. This not only helps in scrutinizing the data monitoring but also analyzes the data individually to get the most valuable information in real time.
The industry often suffer from inefficiency even after incorporating the technologies into the business. This is because the data their system gathers resides in different disconnected sources. To resolve this disconnectivity issue, Steel Manufacturing ERP Software consolidates all the data from the different sources and brings it together through a centralized platform for in-depth analysis.
Consolidation helps in performing in-depth analysis as well as brings efficiency, saves time, and reduces costs that are required to handle data from different disconnected sources. The centralized cloud platform makes it easier to control all the data through an all-inclusive BI dashboard.
Due to complicated industrial tasks, data aggregation becomes challenging and the monitoring processes are hampered because the tasks are performed manually giving rise to human errors and delayed work. ERP technology with the aid of the BI tool helps automate tedious complicated tasks so that there is no need to train employees for learning different programs whenever a new technology is introduced in the industry.
Before the analytical tools were introduced in the Steel Industries, a lot of produced goods were turned into scrap products because of the defects found in them. The most common causes of the defects were improper furnace temperatures, a restricted overview of the production cycle, improper planning of raw material usage, and inattentiveness toward the impact of chemicals used in production. Lighthouse ERP’s IoT platform assists manufacturers in understanding the possible error factors by analyzing the impacts
Many Steel industries today use a lot of sensors — temperature, belt rotation, defects sensor, etc — to gather data from different stages of production. But the systems that these industries use to process the gathered data do not help in generating valuable information that could help executives and operators to focus on the most important aspects. With the utility of IoT implemented in the Lighthouse ERP for steel fabrication, all the sensors are connected to a centralized platform which helps in converting raw sensor data into smart sensor data and transforming the gathered data into powerful information.
