Saldanha Steel, Iscor`s state-of-the-art steel mill on the west coast, reached full design capacity of 100 000 tons during August, and Keops Altech (previously Keops Isis) is proud to be associated with the achievement of this significant milestone.
Keops Altech, a member of the multibillion-rand JSE Securities Exchange-listed Altech group of companies, first became involved with Saldanha Steel during the construction phase of its Greenfield Plant in 1997. The company was awarded a six-month contract to develop an integrated system for raw materials handling (RMH) to monitor and control movement of raw materials into the factory and products out of the factory over the weighbridge.
Operating on Oracle 7.3.3 running on Digital Unix, it enables internal departmental invoicing as well as account payments by providing the SAP-based Business Management System with accurate information. A stockpile and storage management facility graphically depicts storage locations and provides for statistical analysis and availability prediction in days.
Keops Altech was also involved by Saldanha Steel to design a production management solution in conjunction with Isis in support of real-time operational decisions in the production environment. A layer of software including Oracle, Digital Alpha Servers and Unix was implemented to allow a coherent view of all the production facilities and realise manufacturing execution by providing functionality for: Production schedules for the entire steel mini-mill; updating the schedules in real-time; production management information, raw material and finished goods tracking; and laboratory information management services. Scheduling functionality, which is the binding factor in achieving an integrated control environment, was accomplished and resulted in substantial cost and manpower savings for Saldanha Steel.
Product quality and the management thereof before, during and after the production process is one of the critical success factors of Saldanha Steel and a system was required to enable this process. Keops Altech concluded that a LIMS, tightly integrated with SAP R/3 QM was the best way to achieve this objective. The LIMS provides basic and advanced sample and laboratory management practices such as sample tracking, workflow, approval options, consumable management, test costing and a wide range of reports and standard operating procedures. It also integrates well with numerous laboratory instruments and SAP R/3 through QM-IDI (the SAP R/3 standard interface for QM). The project duration was nine months and it was, once again, completed on time and within budget by Keops Altech.
MD of Keops Altech, Pieter Theron, says: "Saldanha Steel is an exceptional facility which ranks as one of the most advanced steel plants in the world. The fact that it reached full design capacity is partly attributable to the full efficacy of the plant`s leading edge technology, and Keops Altech played a role in installing and merging these technologies. We are confident that the plant will maintain production stability and continue to operate as a low cash cost producer. Keops Altech is proud to be associated with Saldanha Steel."
Share
Keops Altech is the leading provider of manufacturing execution and control systems to the South African processing industry and a well-established integrator of multi-level industrial information systems. The company traditionally operated in the metals industry, but is currently growing its presence in virtually all sectors of the manufacturing industry. Besides expanding into Africa and increasing its local client base, Keops Altech`s strategic goal is to provide clients with added value by increasing operational efficiency through the implementation of and redesigning operations management practices and business processes and enabling systems, while simultaneously providing conceptual solutions for the integration of current and future IT architectural building blocks.
Editorial contacts