Development of Recommendations for Standardization Regarding Data Acquisition, Storage, and Transfer in Steel Industry Within the End-To-End Supply Chain Digitalization
- Metallic Products usually pass through multi-step production processes at several companies on their way to the end product. Stricter tolerances are imposed on suppliers within a supply chain to ensure the required properties of a company's own product, creating the bullwhip effect. Intermediate products that do not meet the strict tolerances are not further processed or supplied, which leads to high scrap or rework rates. A higher transparency regarding the intermediate products' exact material properties and specifications supports adaptive production processes. By enabling digital data exchange and further standardizing it companies would be able to adapt their production processes even if the strict tolerances are not met Through this, problems such as high rejection costs, lack of productivity, and lack of cooperation will be overcome.
With this master thesis, standardization aspects of data acquisition, storage, and transmission will be investigated to support digitalization and data availability in the steel industry. As a first step, the importance of standardization, in general, needs to be identified. For this, an investigation, analysis, and evaluation of the current situation, existing technologies, standards, and specifications for digital cooperation within supply chains will be carried out. Gap analysis is to be carried out with the data collected through literature review, workshops with steel industry representatives, and online surveys to develop practical recommendations. Lastly, recommendations for the use of technologies and methods that significantly contribute to the digitalization of the supply chain are to be developed.
