Journey to Provide Jit Service to Fabricate Steel

by Bhat K.P. Rajesh, Lau Wing Keong

Publisher - NatSteel Holdings Pte Ltd

Category - General Novel

For construction sites, NatSteel caters variety of cut-and-bend bar orders with variations in terms of diameter, length, shape and quantity. This constitutes both simple bend and complex bend shapes. Construction companies have started requiring more and more orders based on their casting needs at their sites. The complexity of this multitude of orders directly relates to organising and grouping the goods that intern would directly impact production with extremely challenging and error-prone in handling such multiple orders and re-batching. Occasionally such errors are undetected and orders are sent to customers and later rejected. Costs are high for regrouping activities both financially, and in terms of customer relationships. Natsteel needed a versatile solution in enabling both production with respect to customised batches and higher productivity. This led to the brainstorm and having cooperation with several software and hardware vendors in developing an integrated and automated solutions in our Cut-and-Bend Operations at NatSteel Holdings. The entire process from receiving the bars, to accurately produce the orders as required is automated with the use of specially-designed machinery and state-of-the-art software for data management. This is the first fully integrated and automatic cut and-bend line in the world and has boosted production volume by 20% while increasing manpower productivity by 18%, lowering wastage, well-balanced production and on-time deliveries. Further the integrated line had helped to boost safety in automatic transfers of bar, removing manual interventions and handling. Integrated and Automated Production Lines enable Cut-and-Bend Operations at NatSteel Holdings with a goal to achieve better profitability, ensuring safety and customer fulfillment through higher delivery throughput and compliance. This paper would present the Integrated and Automated Production Lines systems and achievements.

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