2008/05/12

AISTech Day 2 (06 May, 2008)

The Pitt's conference center:

070

Today, I've "played" my last session:

BAM Applications and Steel Production – Getting business value from tracking information

A recent niche of Business Intelligence is called BAM (Business Activity Monitor) which means having high value business information in near real time presented using Dashboards and Key Performance Indicators.

This is an area which provide huge added value for steel makers because the BAM paradigm is an enabling technology to optimize the production stages and processes.

A BAM application has been developed and released during 2007 in Thy Marcinelle plant in Belgium (RIVA group).

An integrated system has been developed with the following features:

  • Level 2 Tracking and Supervision
  • Level 3 Reporting
  • Level 3 Plant Dashboard

Level 2 software layers send information to Level 3 reporting and BAM application using an enterprise service bus architecture. Tracking information are processed and connected to business information providing real time monitoring of the plant performance.

Instead I've attended to the following sessions:

Multisite Sales and Operation Planning at a Major Flat Carbon Steel Producer

P. Moinier, AIS

The abstract is:

BlueScope Steel (BSL) is implementing an integrated supply chain management system with AIS' SteelPlanner® solutions. The solution includes multi-site sales planning, operation planning, master scheduling and unit scheduling. This paper describes in detail the multi-site sales planning. The objective is to optimize profit by choosing which orders have to be produced on the different production units and when. While doing this, production constraints like line calendar (maintenance, shifts), line campaigns, and minimum/target/maximum levels of WIP stock are considered. The expected benefits of the overall project, integrating different levels of the supply chain in one view, are to sustain target delivery performance by more effective flow, order and inventory planning. In particular, the benefits from multi-site sales planning optimization will be improved customer service (due date fulfillment increase and lead time decrease), a reduction of production and stocking costs, an increase of line throughput , an improved visibility of potentially upcoming problems and improved information sharing among different management levels.

I was very impressed by Pascal presentation and he's a very good speaker.

I've already seen SteelPlanner at the previous AISTech during a session.

I know it (http://www.steelplanner.com/) as a very good tool for scheduling optimizations of hot strip mill. In this session Pascal has explained the optimization of the whole supply chain but I'haven't understood the role of steel planner in this. 

Integration Technology at ArcelorMittal Dofasco

B. Barna, ArcelorMittal Dofasco Inc.

The abstract is:

It is not a question of "if" you will have to deal with integration issues, but rather a question of "to what extent." ArcelorMittal Dofasco has recognized the key role integration and related technologies play in an IT strategy supporting a manufacturing environment. This presentation recounts ArcelorMittal Dofasco's journey to its present state, and highlights successes and lessons learned in the modernization of its information systems.

During the session the it governance approach (...and wishing list) of ArcelorMittal has been discussed.

WebSphere MQSeries provides the ESB while BEA provides all the applications and portal development infrastructure.

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