Steel Company achieved 20x ROI using advanced analytics

Introduction

Braincube was selected to partner with Steel Company X in the mining area of its digital transformation process. One of Brazil’s key steel producers, Steel Company X represents a landmark in the country‘s industrialization process (both historically and in modern times). They are also one of the world’s most efficient integrated steel-producing complexes.

Here’s how they wove new digital solutions into their existing continuous improvement methodologies.

Implementation

In 2019, Steel Company X partnered with Braincube to assist with its digital transformation. Braincube is an IIoT platform with specialized applications designed for industry. Steel Company X’s team wanted to leverage Braincube’s advanced analytics capabilities to accelerate their production KPIs and bring digitalization into their factories.

Specifically, they wanted to increase metallurgical recovery on the flotation lines. This would allow them to potentially avoid fluxes like sand and rich slag. The company’s engineering team and the local Brazilian Braincube team began a connectivity audit to understand their available data. This helped the team know where to install sensors and, eventually, set them up to interrelate all of their variables including raw material suppliers, weather, shifts, etc.

Steel Company X worked with their local Braincube team to build a digital twin of their production process. This virtual environment emulates the production reality of the plant and is continuously updated to reflect the current production state.

Additionally, Braincube’s platform connects data from a variety of siloed systems and transforms it into usable information for decision-making, optimization, and better process insights.

Transformation

Steel Company X inputted their specifications into Braincube so that they could quickly analyze, control, and implement rules into their process. This included areas such as silica construction and operational restrictions.

With more than 600 variables in their mining process, the company needed technologies that were more robust than Lean strategies. Braincube’s CrossRank AI algorithm helped reveal optimizations that had not been previously understood. By adding all 600 variables to the study, they were able to take an unbiased approach to their data and reveal complex, undiscovered data relationships.

Braincube’s Advanced Analysis App

Braincube’s suite of Advanced Analytics applications, which leverage Braincube’s CrossRank AI technology, allowed the team to rank the most influential factors. These apps helped them identify the ideal combination of parameters to achieve their optimal metallurgical recovery. The company’s engineering team worked with Braincube consultants to determine which production rules should then be implemented on the shop floor.

Next, the team used the Braincube Live App to push these changes into production. Braincube Live is a digital dashboard displaying the exact (or range of) setpoints that operations should apply to stay compliant. This gives the shop floor an intuitive and dynamic way to view the parameters for prioritization. Alerts can be configured to notify teams if something goes out of compliance, allowing for faster reaction times to prevent shutdowns, breakage, and lost time.

These digitalization improvements go beyond the plant floor. Process engineers can monitor the performance of the production rules through automatic reports generated within Braincube, from anywhere in the world. Automated reports are now part of an integrated routine to leverage the data that’s collected.

This new way of working stems from Steel Company X’s existing Six Sigma initiatives for metallurgical recovery in flotation. The company has seen positive results from implementing Braincube: they intend to expand Braincube to additional lines, building a stronger continuous improvement strategy over time.