Wire and Rod Manufacturer

The Quality Control Laboratory is responsible for testing coil samples.  These sample results must be maintained for historical purposes for a period of ten years.  Additionally, the result of the testing determines the disposition of the coils.

The determination of what tests are required is specified from a specification maintained in the ERP system.  These specifications also dictate the valid range of test results that will determine the disposition of the coil.  Coils falling out of the specified range may still be applied to an order if the customer accepts the out of tolerance exception.  The LIMS system allows the Quality Control Supervisor the ability to create required and standards tests to be done on all steel lots.  The Supervisor also has the ability to define equations for the calculation of reported results.

The tracking of the coils into the box anneal, continuous anneal, and draw lines is required to reduce data entry error and data association errors of the test data.  The results of the testing must be returned to the ERP system.  The tracking of product at the processing work centers is also needed to support the ERP Work In Progress (WIP) inventory.

To provide the greatest freedom of tracking of coils, the tracking system must be able to accept changes in coil schedules as long as the coil has not started at the work area. Therefore, the manufacturing train will typically only be one or two operations long (draw, or anneal or anneal and Quality Control).  The ERP system will be providing the schedules for each of the work areas.  The tracking system will report conformance to the schedule by indicating the start and finish of a coil at the work area.

The Quality Control Staff must be able to easily play back past test results to determine process problems and for certification verification.  This includes the defense of claims.  The specification that the coil was tested against must be maintained. Also, specification version control must be supported by the ERP system.

The tracking system and the LIMS system when integrated ensure the test results of particular lots of coils are correctly associated.  The integration with the tracking system ensures that no steel is allowed to proceed to the next processing step unless it has passed the required quality requirements.

Integrated Process Automation & Control Technologies