Broner Metals Solutions

The use of specialised despatch scheduling software can lead to major improvements in managing the flow of finished product from the plant to the customer. While advanced planning and scheduling systems are put in place to ensure that the plant operates at maximum utilization, produces the optimum product mix, minimizes inventory and maximizes on-time delivery, the full benefits can only be achieved if there is effective management of the despatch process so that the products are handled and transported efficiently to their final customer destination on-time.

All major steel companies with a wide range of products face many challenges in this final stage of the supply chain process. There are a wide range of different types of trucks, wagons, and ships to be loaded, all with their specific constraints; together with restrictions in the areas of timing, routes, material handling, free space in the loading area, and management of transport companies. Having produced what the customers want, no steel company wants then to find that the products are delayed and sit in finished goods inventory because they can't be shipped to the customer on time.

Usinas Siderúrgicas de Minas Gerais S/A (Usiminas), a 4.7m tons per annum plant in Brazil, is using Broner Despatch Scheduler software to improve the scheduling of the despatch process and provide improvements to the efficiency of shipping to their customers.

The company produces a wide variety of products including plates, which present their own special handling problems. The steel industry uses a number of different transport companies because they consider it important to allocate the work between the different companies so that each gets their correct share of the total business.

Building optimized loads

The Despatch Scheduler uses constraint based programming to build the loads, create loading sequences for loads and assign transport companies to the loads. They are built up taking into account all of the parameters that affect the loading and distribution process in order to: despatch high priority order first; meet delivery dates; optimize use of vehicles; and minimize handling time.

The starting point is the list of planned products, and customer priorities for the shipments for a given day that was produced by the Broner Planning & Scheduling system. The Despatch Scheduler also has a database containing the details of every truck and wagon from every transport company that can be used, including dimensions specification, maximum weight, and the minimum weight. This software gives information whether the truck or wagon is fully loaded or is carrying less than the minimum allowed weight.

Special trucks may be able to carry one large coil or two smaller coils while a flat truck may be able to carry slabs or plates or bundles or coils in different combinations.

By comparing all of the possible combinations from these two databases the Despatch Scheduler is able to select the appropriate trucks and also to optimize the loading so that they are carrying as close as possible to the maximum allowed weight.

By maximizing the weight, this reduces the number of incomplete loads and increases the amount of products that can be delivered on-time.

Working backwards from the due date and time of arrival at the customer, the Despatch Scheduler calculates the transport time and determines the required despatch time for each customer order. It considers the transport companies that deliver to that region, the route taken and the restrictions on that route such as maximum height through tunnels, weight limit of a bridge, steep hills, and the closure of certain roads at night for safety reasons. The journey may be in two stages, for example, by rail to a steel stockist and then by road to the end customer.

Load sequencing

There is a continuous stream of trucks arriving at the plant each with an assigned time slot that is dependent on the products to be loaded and the time required for this, together with knowledge of the journey time so that the steel will arrive at the customer at a determined time. For each vehicle there is an assigned arrival time and time slot, which guarantees that for that vehicle, the required load and the right handling equipment are readily available, and the load can be dispatched without delay.

Export orders are transported by ship, so there are additional considerations. Rail and road vehicles transport the steel products to the port, where they are offloaded to the port warehouse prior to being loaded on to the ship, but consideration must be given to the receiving capacity of the warehouse.

The loading of a ship also requires some changes to the normal loading sequence of orders into the wagons and trucks depending on the route of the ship and which orders will need to be offloaded first and considering the optimum loading of the ship. It may be preferable for coils slabs to be loaded first, at the bottom of the ship, then slabs bundles and plates on the next layer above, and finally plates coils at the top; but this simple approach will be modified by the impact of other groupings, by customer and by region, in order to schedule the transport to the docks in the right sequence.

For rail transport, the key determinant is the departure time of the train. The Despatch Scheduler builds up a complete sequence of loads for each wagon in the train in the correct order for loading the train.

Material handling

The despatch scheduling system understands considers the space that is available within the plant and manages this to determine which vehicles can be in the loading area at any particular time while allowing sufficient operational space for movement of the handling equipment and still retain the required safety space.

One of the benefits of the system is that it reduces the amount of unnecessary handling of stock, especially for plates. This is a very complex process to schedule the loading of plates because they the plates are all stacked on top of each other. To pick a plate on the bottom of the stack would require most of the stack to be moved. The system builds the schedule with knowledge of the position of each plate on the stack and places them arranged as per the order they are required. So, all vehicles that will transport the products from the top of the stack enter the loading area first, followed by the trucks for the plates that are underneath this.

This reduces the amount of material handling, improves loading times and reduces delivery times. It is especially important for plates, that the trucks arrive on time especially for plates transport, as any delay would disrupt the order of operations and cause delays and additional work.

There is a greater chance of delay if different transport companies are used. So, for to make plate loading easier, the company can opt to specify that. In this way, every plate within a stack of plates that is to be dispatched, should belong to the same transport.

Results

With the Broner Despatch Scheduler, Usiminas expect: to improve the flow of inventory through the plant - just by speeding up the despatch process; to contribute to better on-time delivery; to improved customer satisfaction; to reduce unnecessary handling; to provide better control of the scheduling process and to improve the quality of the dispatch process data.

Whereas previously it was difficult to provide a fair distribution of the loads between different transport companies, Usiminas now expect to have effective control of this area, so that each transport company is allocated the quota of business that they expect.

The system can help reduce costs. The increase in load weights to a level closer to the maximum allowed, will mean that Usiminas will be using the capacity of the vehicles better. By having all the processes automated, the dispatch scheduling efficiency can be considerably improved and then the time taken for producing the dispatch documentation can also be reduced.