Industry 4.0 in the Steel Sector

Big River Steel is the owner of the most modern steel mill in Northern America. The plant was built by the SMS Group, the leading supplier of solutions for the global steel industry. SMS completed the whole investment, including the supply of mechanical and electrical installations as well as automation systems.

Development of the Manufacturing Execution and Planning system

As long-standing partner of the SMS Group Macrix has been tasked with the development of the MES 4.0 system (Manufacturing Execution and Planning System).

Control of multiple plants

The system is responsible for planning and tracking all production processes. It gives controls the work of the different components of the factory.

Quality Control

The system is responsible for quality control during every phase of production.

Process

Our team of specialists collaborated closely with engineers from the SMS Group and Big River Steel, basing the project management on Agile methodologies.

Apart from standard programing platforms (.Net, among others), we also used the tools developed by Macrix: the Yucon PRO configurator enables the mill technologists to adjust the manufacturing without the need of halting the production. A friendly interface allows for making changes without software knowledge. ProconTEL, in turn – a framework dedicated to distributed systems – is a basis for communication between the MES system and lower levels of automation.

Our specialists participated in all phases of mill commissioning. Currently we are supplying the technical support for the MES.

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