Launch of the product traceability system in the production process "DKLink Pro" at the Seversky Pipe Plant

DK-Expert has completed the implementation of the track and tracing systems - DKLink Pro - at the Seversky Pipe Plant, which is part of the Pipe Metallurgical Company, the leader of the Russian pipe industry. One of the largest in Russia, Seversky Pipe Plant produces a wide range of products for oil and gas companies and the construction industry.

At the end of November 2008 the DKLink Pro system was put into commercial operation at the warehouses of the steel-smelting shop. The specifics of the information exchange between various divisions of the plant required DK-Expert specialists to carefully study, optimize, and, in some cases, revise some of the existing business processes, as well as accounting technologies. In this project, the DKLink Pro system is subject to strict requirements for reliability and downtime, since The steel mill is open 24/7.

The system is used to mark ingots, track their movement between processing stages using automatic identification technologies, automate the recording of acceptance of finished products to the warehouse, placement, picking of orders and shipment, that is, recording information about the current goods movement in real time. The warehouse is a platform for floor storage of metal ingots with a length of 6 to 10 meters, each weighing up to 5 tons. The task of marking is complicated by the fact that the metal received at the warehouse has a temperature of up to 500 degrees.

The operating mode of the system is round-the-clock, several divisions of the plant are involved in its operation (about 50 users in total) and an even greater number of users using its information. The project used both Zebra marking equipment and Motorola data collection terminals, as well as a large number of PCs. Up to 200 units of finished products (packages of cast pipe blanks) are shipped from the warehouse per day. Within one month, about 50 thousand tons of products pass through the warehouse.

In the course of the project, in addition to automating the main business processes, DK-Expert automated accounting for the performance of operations specific to metallurgical production: cutting of ingots, registration and binding of chemical analysis data. In the course of the project, a block of reports was developed for various departments of the plant: steel shop, product quality control department, sales department, etc. To provide accurate information about the weight of the shipped products, the DKLink Pro system was integrated with the weighing equipment of the shop.

From the point of view of traceability of information, the project is interesting in that for each batch of products in the DKLink Pro system its full chemical composition is stored. Another difference of this project from others is a large number of internal preparatory operations on products. During these processes, the DKLink Pro system records the entire history of work with products at the level of an individual worker using barcoding technologies.

The implementation of the project took about six months, during which serious training was carried out, both for the working personnel of the workshop and for the employees of the process control department. The APCS department is provided with complete information about the internal structure of the system and database, which allows them to generate any additional reports and quickly transfer information to the corporate SAP R / 3 system.

The launch of the project provided Seversky Pipe Plant with such opportunities as:

Obtaining the balance of the metal in the warehouse of the steel shop at any time. The labor intensity of maintaining balances has decreased several times.
Marking of finished products with modern materials. The workshop completely switched from cardboard tags to a polymer hang tag with a barcode.
Operational accounting of the movement of each melting of metal, tied to the shift and personally to the worker, which increases personal responsibility and product quality.
Automated preparation of shipping documents for products. Due to this, the labor intensity of preparing a quality certificate for products has been reduced, and the number of errors has significantly decreased.
Operational and transparent accounting of the movement of each metal melt.
Significant acceleration of interaction between several divisions of the plant due to automatic collection and centralized storage and processing of information on the quantity and quality of products.

The DKLink Pro system is a mass-production modular solution developed by the DataKrat Corporation to automate the accounting of production and warehouse processes. The system is designed to keep records of inventory items at industrial enterprises.

The main advantages of the DKLink Pro system:

Organization of traceability in production (history of the movement of accounting objects).
Increasing the reliability of data (errors of the "human factor" are excluded as much as possible).
Prompt provision of information to management systems (ERP, accounting) in real time.
Reduction of labor intensity in the performance of accounting operations by personnel.
Reducing the loss of accounting objects by registering the movement of products in real time.
Improving the quality of products (personal responsibility, production history).
Optimization of the internal document flow of the enterprise.