Improving Profit Margins in Steel Manufacturing Through Reliability

🚀 Steel plants don’t just produce steel — they power economies. But keeping furnaces, rolling mills, and critical assets running without interruption is a challenge every plant leader knows too well. This is where Asset Performance Management (APM) fits beautifully into the Enterprise Architecture (EA) framework — bridging business goals, shop-floor data, and technology execution. 💡 How APM Enables Steel Plants within EA: 🎯 Business: Aligns with goals like reducing downtime & optimizing energy. 📊 Information: Converts IoT + SCADA data into actionable insights. 🛠️ Application: Predicts failures before they occur using AI/ML. ⚙️ Technology: IoT sensors, historians, data lakes, cloud infra. ✅ Performance: Ensures measurable outcomes with real-time KPI tracking. 📌 Use Cases in Steel Plants: 🔥 Blast Furnace Reliability: APM detected abnormal vibration in a blower motor → maintenance planned in advance → prevented 72 hours of downtime. 🏗️ Crane Operations: Predictive monitoring of overhead cranes reduced sudden breakdowns by 30%, ensuring continuous logistics inside the mill. ⚡ Energy Efficiency in EAF: APM insights optimized power consumption → 5–7% reduction in energy cost per tonne of steel. 🛡️ Safety & Compliance: Risk-based inspection (RBI) reduced unplanned safety incidents by 40%. 📊 Impact Delivered (Industry Benchmarks): 🔄 Downtime reduced by 15–20%. ⏳ Asset life extended by 20–25%. 💰 OPEX savings of $2–4M annually (for a mid-size plant). 🌍 Improved ESG score through energy optimization & reduced CO₂ footprint. 👉 In short, APM within EA isn’t just about technology — it’s about creating a connected steel plant where data drives resilience, efficiency, and profitability. 💬 Question to You: How is your steel plant leveraging APM or predictive maintenance today? Is it just a tool, or is it part of your enterprise-wide digital strategy? #Steel #DigitalTransformation #APM #EnterpriseArchitecture #Industry40 #SmartManufacturing #PredictiveMaintenance #SteelPlant #OperationalExcellence #Innovation

Don’t you think it’s strange? The principles of effective maintenance have been known for decades! But despite that... Thousands of industrial plants around the world STILL struggle with low reliability and high maintenance costs. Only few organisations have really achieved high reliability and sustained top quartile maintenance costs. The main reasons for this poor performance are simple: → 𝐑𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐚𝐛𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐢𝐬 𝐦𝐚𝐝𝐞 𝐭𝐨𝐨 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐥𝐞𝐱, and organisations lose focus of what actually matters i.e. the ‘basics’ of planning & scheduling, preventive maintenance and defect elimination. → 𝐎𝐫𝐠𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐬𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐤 𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰𝐥𝐞𝐝𝐠𝐞 of these basics and often don’t engage external consultants because of the high costs involved. → 𝐎𝐫𝐠𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐬𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐟𝐚𝐢𝐥 𝐚𝐭 𝐢𝐦𝐩𝐥𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 the basics effectively. And as a result don’t achieve the performance improvements they’re looking for. These 3 reasons undermine profitability and long-term success of many industries. 𝐁𝐮𝐭 𝐢𝐭 𝐝𝐨𝐞𝐬𝐧’𝐭 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐰𝐚𝐲. In my 20+ years in the industry, I’ve learned that most companies can reduce maintenance costs by up to 20%... and reduce maintenance tasks whilst improving reliability. This means most asset-intensive companies have an opportunity to reduce total operating costs by 4% to 12% through adopting better maintenance practices. How do you do this? You simply implement the 4 elements of the Road to Reliability Framework. -Planning & Scheduling -Preventive Maintenance -Defect Elimination -Leadership and Culture And this is exactly what we help our clients with. #maintenance #reliability #ReliabilityAcademy

Equipment performance management relays – in inefficient way - on reactive work requests and time-based Preventive Maintenance (PM) suggestions from the Original Equipment Manufacturer. The original way of thinking about equipment reliability simply has meant adding more PM to equipment with issues, ordering more spare parts for critical equipment because of long lead time. The result was spending too much money on the known issues but still suffered with other acute reliability issues. The maintenance budget continues to rise and reliability decreases. It is important to develop an equipment reliability management program to minimize the different waste sources. The key element to implement and sustain the equipment reliability process is ownership from maintenance and management. An equipment ownership system was developed to implement and sustain TPM. Each piece of equipment in the plant is assigned to the team member who has the most experience with it. The equipment reliability process is based on know-how from different resources, including equipment co-operational suppliers and skilled engineers and team members. The equipment owner TPM system is effective and proactive to improve equipment reliability, thus, improving business performance over time. This method is feasible and has a low cost. The equipment owner TPM can achieve the optimal equipment reliability, which means that for the least possible cost, the authors achieve the level of required performance from our equipment in order to meet our business goals. The attached study contributes to the equipment reliability management issue and the productivity improvement strategy by proposing how to engage employees to improve equipment performance. This study is also expected to contribute to the extension of Toyota Production System (TPS) concept in other words Advanced TPS in real manufacturing environment. #management #productivity #manufacturing #improvement #maintenance