Bhilai Stee Plant (BSP), the flagship unit of the public sector Steel Authority of India ltd (SAIl), added yet another feather in its cap when Manufacturing Execution System (MES) successfully completed one year of its operations, a release of the plant claimed on Monday.
It is worth mentioning that BSP is the first plant in SAIl to implement MES for improving efficiency in supply chain right from order to production and dispatch. With the implementation of a technology improvement tool like MES, the plant has already started reaping the benefits and the shops like Plate mill and SMS2 and RSM have surpassed their earlier performance in past few months and have posted new records.
MES has provided an integrated and online platform to all from grass root level at shop floor to the decision makers at the management level. An end to end efficient process chain has been established between customer and BSP where each supplier and the receiver departments in the chain have been tightly coupled.
It has also provided an all important link between the machine automation on one side and important management functions like order and inventory management on the other side. This brings BSP into the league of world class manufacturing companies operating with such technology. It needs to be appreciated that the processes in manufacturing industry like steel are very complex and uncertain in comparison to FMCG or assembly units where the processes are more defined.
Importantly, these (ERP and MES) systems can be expanded to existing mills in BSP and also to the upcoming 7 MT expansion units. This will consolidate and bring the entire supply chain into one common platform enabling information availability with less manual interventions.