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Project Goals

Interpipe is an international vertically integrated company, a manufacturer of pipes and railway wheels. The company is one of the ten largest pipe producers in the world. The sales of pipe and wheel products in 2015 amounted to 600 thousand tons.

Interpipe is the third largest manufacturer of solid-rolled railway wheels in the world. Company products are shipped to 80 countries through a network of sales offices located in the key markets of the CIS, the Middle East, North America and Europe. The holding structure includes a management company, 5 factories and trading offices around the world. The company's products are supplied to 80 countries.

For several years, at the key production sites of the holding, was implemented the IT-Enterprise ERP system which in some cases replaced the previously existing solutions. One of the most important management tasks was to increase the management efficiency of the holding's production units. Integrated ERP-system IT-Enterprise was selected for the implementation. During the project it was implemented in all manufacturing enterprises of the holding. This made it possible to increase the enterprises productivity, switch to by-order planning, ensured that more than 90% of customer’s orders were completed on time, and increased the holding’s maneuverability in the market thanks to the efficient resources allocation.

Project Description

Production management in the IT-Enterprise system covers the main and associated management processes and is based on the modern SmartFactory concept - the implementation of Industry 4.0 elements .

The key principles that are the basis of the SmartFactory:

• The ability to collect and save data online;
• Decentralization
• Availability in the form of service
• Interaction between IT system and manufacturing equipment through IIoT
• Modular structure
• Mobile Platforms Support

The priorities of Industry 4.0 in production are the individualization and efficiency of order fulfillment. Attention to details of each order and to the requirements of each client - leads to an increase in the number of orders. This requires an increase in equipment throughput. Under these conditions, reducing the number of equipment changeovers (forced unproductive downtime) and the timely supply of raw materials become critical.

Workers are responsible for effective changeovers: their actions should be synchronized with the optimal manufacturing process calculated by the system. With a large number of orders and changeovers, even a small delay will lead to a delay in the execution of orders, and disrupting the implementation of the entire production plan.

In order to increase the customer service level (the number of orders fully implemented on time) and to increase the efficiency of production equipment usage at the holding’s enterprises, the end-to-end order management was implemented. Synchronization of shop floor personnel and production equipment is achieved with the modern Industrial Internet of Things tools that integrate shop level data in a single ERP system storage. Modern optimization procedures minimizes the number of changeovers and allows you to quickly build an efficient production plan.

Orders receipt and change efficiency increase

The system implements the end-to-end process of production orders execution: from receiving an order to finished product shipment. Manufacturing control system consists of ERP production management modules, that allow you to record the placement of new orders at the plant and to perform the assessment of capacity utilization (from a month to a year); APS modules that provide weekly planning, by-shift daily production plans for work centers, production accounting of products, accounting and analysis of product quality and related processes.

The “order basket” is a key tool for speeding up order fulfillment, analyzing the implementation of “standard” orders and changes to an order. The analysis is carried out to determine the feasibility of the order, taking into account resource constraints - by raw materials, production capacities, shop floor personnel. Changes are analyzed in terms feasibility and final cost of the order.

Control and identification of the materials movement in production

Wireless technologies development and industrial automation allowed the holding to establish an end-to-end traceability system. Data on the materials movement in the workshops are read by sensors. Due automation equipment integration, data quickly get into the system. Production site master can add information on the performed production operations to the IT system using special terminals in the workshop.

This allowed to reduce time to identify products during the technology process. Product data automatically “pulled up” before the equipment adjustment. The operator work during the data entrance is minimized. This reduces failure risks during data entrance into the system due to human factors.

Operational Production Planning

The operational planning functionality produce a forecast of the orders fulfillment according to optimization criteria, based on information on accepted orders.

In addition to generation the by-shift tasks for work centers by orders, the daily requirements for basic materials for the monthly production program implementation becomes known.

This information allows to achieve:

- storage costs reduction

- reduce the risk of violation of the rental schedule

- orders execution disruption

- improve the rhythm of production

- reduce the equipment downtime.

All this increase the workshops efficiency.

Results

IT-Enterprise.SmartFactory is based on the RCM2 methodology. Implementation of this s management system at the plants of the Interpipe holding has reduced the costs of maintenance and repairs of the of production equipment components on the basis of its current state information. Transition to Predictive Maintanence ensured the reliability of the equipment through preventive repairs at a time when the probability of node failure becomes high.

Implementation of the “Order Basket” toolkit allowed the customer to know the current order status, and the contractor is able to analyze the statistics. Statistical data studying reveals patterns in the order structure and improves the forecasting quality. The inquire time was reduced to one day, the reaction of the factory services to incoming order changes also decreased. New data provided an opportunity to revise the regulatory and target performance of the enterprise.

Products traceability in production accounting allowed company to successfully pass the certification of pipe products for compliance with international quality standards.