STEELMAN: Manufacturing Modules

The purpose of the manufacturing component of the STEELMAN System, is two fold:

• to support the sales order entry function in providing on-line response to customer order inquiries, and
• to assist in the medium and long term production planning of all Processing Units, so as to balance their work loads and to maximize utilization of the bottleneck operations.

The complete system is composed of several modules. The foundations of the manufacturing component of STEELMAN are the Production Routing Module and the Capacity Planning Module. When combined these form a Capability Model of the steel producing facilities. These modules are fully integrated to the other modules of STEELMAN and to the 3rd Party Financials.

Order inquiries are introduced into the manufacturing system via the Order Entry and Inquiry Module and the Product Descriptions Module, in an effort to establish a delivery date for the order based on; real time confirmed and reserved loading against the production capacity of the Processing Units. Orders determined to be manufacturable are then planned to establish delivery dates.

Based on the Product Numbers, a corresponding Production Routing Way is defined taking into account specific parameters such as:

• width
• surface qualities
• thickness
• coil diameter (inside and/or outside)
• steel grade
• finishing and trim requirements
• length
• packaging requirements

The production planning stage will establish both the product routing and material requirements, (based on a grade and physical dimension dependent consumption rates) for each Processing Unit included in the product routing in terms of semi-finished product passed out of the Processing Unit. Once the required Product Routing Way individual processing times have been established they will be fed into the 'Constraint Based Finite Scheduling Program', as part of the Production Planning Module. The resultant output of the finite scheduler through Production Planning is:

• the confirmation of the requested promise (delivery) date,
• the establishment of a new promise date, or
• the establishment of an alternate promise date.