14 Information Builders Magazine

Operations in 26 countries make Tata Steel one of the world’s most geographically diversified steel producers. Tata Steel serves a wide range of markets including automotive, construction, energy, aerospace, and packaging. But it’s not just its size that sets this industry leader apart. Tata Steel has a unique approach to running a lean manufacturing operation that is increasingly driven by analytics.

According to Kevin van Kessel, head of Operations Reporting for the Supply Chain unit in Tata Steel Europe, the company espouses a manufacturing methodology called “Theory of Constraints” that involves identifying limiting factors standing in the way of achieving production goals, and then systematically improving those constraints until they no longer pose a bottleneck. “According to this theory, complex manufacturing processes consist of multiple linked

T A T AS T E E L

Business Intelligence and Analytics Help European Steel Manufacturer Enforce Theory of Constraint Principles

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activities, some of which act as constraints on the entire system,” says Van Kessel.

Tata Steel uses business intelligence (BI) and integration technology from Information Builders to identify the constraints that affect manufacturing efficiency, with WebFOCUS analytics at the heart of a broad-reaching effort to measure the operation on a point-by-point basis. “WebFOCUS helps with ‘here/now’ operations reporting,” says Van Kessel. “It not only tells us what was produced yesterday, but also what is happening currently

with stock levels, shipments, and other operational details.”

Van Kessel oversees BI activities in the UK and the Netherlands, where Tata Steel Europe maintains its primary manufacturing hubs. His team relies on WebFOCUS to manage information throughout the supply chain, beginning with the continuous casting processes, in which molten steel is cast into slabs, all the way through to the delivery of finished coils of steel to downstream producers. Central to this effort is an intranet-based BI

SnapshotOrganization

Tata Steel is one of the largest steel producers in the world and a leading supplier to construction, automotive, aerospace, packaging, rail, and engineering markets.

Challenge

Empower users with timely, comprehensive information on customer-order and steel-production processes drawn from SAP, Oracle, and other disparate data sources.

Strategy

Centralize analytics through interactive reports and InfoAppsTM that leverage near real-time data as well as historical data from multiple information systems.

Results

Higher production yields, more economical shipping procedures, and faster response to customer inquiries.

Information Builders Solution

WebFOCUS, ReportCaster, and iWay DataMigrator, with ADABAS, Oracle, ODBC, and SAP adapters.

Forges Supply Chain Connections

With WebFOCUS and DataMigrator

T A T A

16 Information Builders Magazine

“WebFOCUS helps with

‘here/now’ operations

reporting. It not only tells

us what was produced

yesterday, but also what

is happening currently

with stock levels,

shipments, and other

operational details.”

Kevin van KesselHead of Operations Reporting for Supply ChainTata Steel Europe

application called RAPID that draws information from a variety of data sources, including ADABAS, Oracle, CSC, Excel, SAP, and SAP BW to measure the manufacturing operation on a point-by-point basis. While Tata’s previous reporting systems mainly focused on historical data, RAPID aims to give users a near real-time view of the operation.

WebFOCUS Upholds BI StandardsThe IT department supports multiple business units and thousands of users. Until recently, these business units had many

different reporting systems – people who report directly against source data – but little standardization. WebFOCUS allows Tata Steel to centralize reporting via the corporate intranet, making it easier for people to

analyze data and distribute reports. InfoApps™ encourage self-service analyses, while parameterized reports enable self-service inquiries, giving employees at all levels of the organization the confidence to find information for themselves, without having to issue complicated queries.

“RAPID is unique in its support for local employees, not just the CEO or the management team,” says Van Kessel. For example, an employee in the logistics department can glance at an InfoAppTM to view pending orders, color-coded to emphasize ever-shifting customer priorities. “They can see the priorities and take action,” he adds.

While SAP can alert workers to overdue orders, RAPID combines SAP information with data from sales, marketing, manufacturing, finance, and other parts of the

company to provide the associated context of each query. “We print one report from RAPID, rather than issuing multiple queries to SAP,” explains Van Kessel. “No matter how good your operational systems, you always need additional reporting and analytics. There are always specific inquiries spanning different systems, and that’s what WebFOCUS facilitates. With WebFOCUS you can shake the haystack and the needles will drop out.”

DataMigrator Prepares and Moves the DataTata’s production managers are challenged to keep yields as high as possible. Raw data is collected during each step on the plant floor, primarily from process control systems. There may be hundreds of variables for each piece of material, and the composition of that material changes at every stage of the process. Monitoring these processes requires data from throughout the manufacturing operation. Tata Steel depends on iWay DataMigrator to load multiple data warehouses, grab data extracts on a scheduled basis, and deliver them to operational systems throughout the enterprise. Because the DataMigrator integration engine provides complete data structure transparency, data sources appear as relational tables, and cross-platform, database extractions and JOINs are just a click or a tap away.

Tata Steel linked DataMigrator to WebFOCUS ReportCaster, which generates new reports as soon as fresh data comes in and delivers the results to subscribers. Other users initiate analytics activities themselves, on an as-needed basis. For example, WebFOCUS helps production managers pinpoint

Solutions in Action

S T E E Linformationbuilders.com/magazine Summer 2017 17

“There are always

specific inquiries

spanning different

systems, and that’s what

WebFOCUS facilitates.

With WebFOCUS you can

shake the haystack

and the needles will

drop out.”

Kevin van KesselHead of Operations Reporting for Supply ChainTata Steel Europe

the root cause of materials defects, as well as to even out variations in yields.

WebFOCUS combines information from multiple data warehouses, as well as from a wide variety of production systems to perform these analyses, including ADABAS, Oracle, CSC, Excel, SAP, and SAP BW. Because WebFOCUS accesses these data sources directly, users don’t require any knowledge of the source structures. All the data is automatically combined into reports and InfoApps.

One InfoApp helps workers in the Tata Steel Strip Products division, which produces more than 150,000 steel coils per year, each weighing between 15 and 25 tons. With such heavy products, focus on safety is paramount. To maximize the efficiency of loading and delivery activities, this InfoApp helps determine the optimal sequence and

placement of each coil as it is loaded on to train cars, ensuring a safe and balanced load. “We built this system in one month, with a great return on investment,” says Van Kessel. “Any attempt to obtain this same type of insight directly from SAP would have been more cumbersome.”

This successful InfoApp illustrates another unique capability of Tata Steel’s BI platform. At most manufacturing companies, reports address discrete topics such as stock levels, schedules, orders, and shipments. Extracting information from many different information systems leads to multiple versions of the truth. At Tata Steel, by contrast, having a controlled and centralized

reporting environment helps people focus on shared details rather than puzzling over conflicting numbers.

Enterprise Analytics Galvanize Workers Based on this proven philosophy, WebFOCUS has penetrated nearly every corner of Tata Steel's enterprise. Approximately 750 users interact with WebFOCUS every day, running more than 1,000 reports, queries, and data requests within marketing, finance, quality control, supply-chain, and other groups inside the company. One popular report, which tracks rail schedules, is run more than 1,600 times per week.

Van Kessel believes WebFOCUS has become so popular, in part, because of its easy-to-use server-based reporting environment. The IT team doesn’t have to worry about version control, software upgrades, and BI installations in multiple departments. Flexible self-service InfoApps and parameterized reports help minimize the total number of reports while maximizing the company’s data sources. “One InfoApp replaced a static PDF report with 26 interactive graphs,” he says.

Van Kessel acknowledges the power and versatility of WebFOCUS as an application development environment. “With WebFOCUS, we do a lot more than just reporting and analytics,” he concludes. “We used it to build a fully functioning material requirements planning system with facilities for inputting data, performing calculations, creating forecasts, and many other information management techniques. We do all this within the WebFOCUS product set.”