bhilai steel plant vinay

8/2/2019 Bhilai Steel Plant Vinay

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Bhilai Steel Plant (BSP) is the flagship unit of Steel Authority of India Limited, the largestproducer of steel in India and one of the leading players worldwide. According to World

Steel Dynamics, SAILwith a turnover exceeding $10 billionranks second in the league of

world class steel makers, evaluated in terms of a slew of performance measurementyardsticks. Currently producing five MT of steel, BSPthe largest in the SAIL family after acapacity expansion program that's currently underwayis set to produce seven MT of crude

steel per annum by 2012.

Not only is it the largest in terms of volume of output, but it is the best steel plant in Indiaas well. BSP has earned the rare distinction of having won the Prime Ministers Trophy forthe best integrated steel plant in India nine out of the sixteen times that the trophy hasbeen awarded so far.

It's no wonder, therefore, that BSP has been in the forefront of adopting emerging

technologies including IT in order to automate its operations. With the adoption of ERP in itscore business areas, BSP has completed the circle of converging manufacturing andbusiness processes into an integrated information backbone.

The role of the IT department

IT is a partner in the progress of the Bhilai Steel Plant. From IBM to EDP and now toC&IT, the department has led the charge of IT intervention in the plant. Unit Record

Machines (IBM 402) yielded their place to auto coders (IBM1401) followed by mainframes

(Burroughs 5900) and servers of different hues (Sun SPARC - 20) along with evolvingdatabases (Oracle version 6 to 10g).

The process of metamorphosis commenced decades ago and reached a crescendo with thecommencement of a SAP ERP project in April 2009 preceded by the roll out of two state-of-

the-art data centers in 2008, all designed to catapult the plant to a higher trajectory ofgrowth.

IT footprint

From a humble beginning in the womb of the Finance & Accounts Department, the C&IT

department has gone on to successfully launch SAP ERP for BSPs core business areas likeFinance & Controlling, Materials Management, Production Planning, Quality Management and

Plant Maintenance including Supplier Relationship Management and Advanced Planner-cum-Optimizer creating a strong foundation of Supply Chain Management.

Besides the above, independent and standalone IT systems have been developed to cater tospecific application areas like:

Employee services covering payroll, loan and fund management etc.

Human resources services including contract, safety, training and recruitment

functions Estate services covering allotment and billing of rented out properties etc. Medical services for the hospital management and billing functions etc. Enterprise Resource Planning

Advances in IT had led to the creation of isolated islands of applications posing problems

galore for consolidation and integration. The effort of consolidating enterprise-wide IT


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applications evolved into the concept of an integrated and unified way of functioning, whichis the basis of Enterprise Resource Planning. ERP enables an organization to synergize its

resources, creates opportunities to reengineer its processes and helps it adopt bestpractices.

SAIL decided to adopt ERP in all its business units in a progressive manner and asked BSP

to do the honor of leading the race. Responding to the call, BSP successfully embracedMySAP in six of its key functional areas viz. Finance & Controlling, Sales & Distribution,

Production Planning, Quality Management, Plant Maintenance and Materials Management.

A consortium of leading IT consultants led by SAP India Ltd. along with Siemens Information

Systems Ltd. and HP India Ltd. extended consultancy support in the implementation phaseof the project. MDI, Gurgaon provided the consultancy during the project preparation andproduct selection stage. Wipro along with HP developed the data centers as a turnkey

project.

BSP went with a big bang approach and all six SAP modulessupported by many other

technology moduleswent live on April 1st, 2009. From that point onwards, all of the

plant's business operations are happening live on the ERP platform without any interruption.The ERP project was followed by the Manufacturing Execution System (MES) project.

Success did not come on a platter. Considerable efforts had to be put-in by all concerned

including the top management, the project core team, the implementation partners, the

shopfloor personnel and the IT personnel of the C&IT department who had to anchor theproject.

An idea about the scale and complexity of the project can be had from the number ofmaster data records that the system refers to in the post go-live stage.

Major Challenges

The standard ERP solution offered by SAP including the IS Mill option fails to map the

characteristic features of a plant manufacturing iron and steel in a comprehensive manner.In BSP, a fair degree of customization and development had to be made on the standard

solution offered by the vendor. Some innovations that may appeal to the iron and steelfraternity globally are:

Raw material handling and reconciliation matching with the movement of railwayrakes wherein the flow of documents invariably lags the materials

Extensive use of variant configurations for defining steel products with theirmultitude of quality and other characteristics and complex pricing schema

Innovative application of continuous and discrete production processes to match theproduction planning systems for iron zone, steel zone, rolling and finishing mills

Reconciliation of theoretical and actual weights of production and dispatch statisticsthrough a mechanism of allowing the generation of negative inventory balances on a

limited scale Innovative handling of generation of scrap, production deviating from standards and

reconciliation of the system stocks with the physical inventories Integrated production and dispatch planning consistent with the constraints of the

rake movement imposed by the transportation agencies such as the Railways


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Extensive mapping of production processes in terms of make-to-order or make-to-stock scenarios matching with the production planning and order execution systems

of different shops and mills Integrated planning and execution of engineering shops production processes in

terms of maintenance, refurbishment and fabrication of orders Purchase procurement system consisting of two or more stages of bidding. Invoice verification and bill registration systems involving Bonus & Rewardprovisions, LD & Discount clauses Costing details down to the equipment level with innovative costing structure E-logbook for recording delays/breakdowns in maintenance of shops and mills Integrated e-payment and automatic bank reconciliation processes

The ERP system installed at BSP made some path breaking decisions with regard to thedefinition of the plant and organizational structure, products with variant configurations,innovative authorization and release strategies, integrated MIS and management

dashboard, business continuity centers, external access with single sign on facility to namea few.

The conclusion to this article will appear in our next issue where the author will highlight thebenefits of the deployment and detail the current IT set-up at the Bhilai Steel Plant.

bhilai steel plant vinay

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