INTERPIPE implemented an effective transformation of production using Smart Factory from IT-Enterprise

Project Goals

INTERPIPE is a global vertically integrated manufacturer of steel pipes and railway wheels.
The company ranks among the top ten pipe producers worldwide and is the third-largest manufacturer of solid-rolled railway wheels globally.

INTERPIPE operates multiple production sites and supplies products to over 80 countries, including European markets, North America and the Middle East.

The strategic objective of the project was to increase operational efficiency across all production units, improve order fulfillment reliability and enable flexible, order-driven manufacturing at scale.

To achieve this, INTERPIPE selected IT-Enterprise Smart Factory as a unified production management platform and deployed it across all manufacturing enterprises within the holding.

Project Description

Production management within IT-Enterprise is based on the Smart Factory / Industry 4.0 concept, combining ERP, APS, MES and IIoT capabilities in a single environment.

The solution supports:

• real-time data collection and storage
• decentralized decision-making
• modular architecture
• seamless integration with production equipment via IIoT
• mobile access for shop-floor personnel

This approach enables high variability order fulfillment while maintaining production efficiency — a critical requirement for large industrial enterprises serving global markets.

Smart Factory principles in practice

Modern industrial manufacturing requires individualized order execution without sacrificing throughput.
For INTERPIPE, this meant minimizing equipment changeovers, synchronizing material supply and aligning personnel actions with system-generated production plans.

Smart Factory from IT-Enterprise calculates optimal production scenarios and synchronizes them with shop-floor execution, ensuring that even small delays do not cascade into large-scale disruptions.

End-to-end order execution

The solution covers the full production lifecycle — from order intake to shipment:

• ERP production management for long- and mid-term capacity planning
• APS for weekly and shift-level scheduling
• MES-level execution control and production accounting
• quality tracking and process analytics

A key tool is the Order Basket, which allows rapid feasibility analysis of incoming orders and order changes, taking into account:

• raw material availability
• equipment capacity
• workforce constraints
• cost implications

This significantly accelerates customer response time while protecting production stability.

Materials traceability and shop-floor control

Using IIoT and wireless technologies, INTERPIPE implemented full traceability of materials and semi-finished products across workshops.

Production data is collected automatically from equipment and shop-floor terminals, reducing manual input and minimizing human-error risks.
Before each equipment setup, relevant product and process data is loaded automatically, improving setup accuracy and reducing downtime.

Operational production planning

Operational planning tools generate optimized fulfillment forecasts based on accepted orders and defined optimization criteria.

In addition to shift-level task generation, the system provides daily material requirements for monthly production programs, enabling:

• reduced inventory and storage costs
• improved production rhythm
• lower equipment downtime
• reduced risk of schedule violations

This directly increases workshop-level efficiency and throughput.

Results

Implementation of IT-Enterprise Smart Factory delivered measurable business impact across the holding.
More than 90% of customer orders are now completed on time, supported by a transition to order-driven production planning and improved resource utilization across production sites. The solution significantly reduced response time to order changes — down to one business day — while increasing forecasting accuracy and enabling consistent performance benchmarking across plants.

The introduction of Predictive Maintenance based on the RCM2 methodology reduced maintenance and repair costs by shifting maintenance activities from reactive interventions to condition-based and predictive approaches. In parallel, end-to-end product traceability across production operations enabled INTERPIPE to successfully pass international quality certifications, supporting the company’s continued expansion in European and global markets.