At Tata Steel Packaging we manufacture so called tinplate. In a nutshell, steel coils of about 20 tons enter our factory at the pickling line. After cold rolling, annealing and secondary rolling they get tinned in our tinning lines before being shipped to our customers.
Assignment description
It is clear to anybody what the ‘happy flow’ through the factory should be. There unfortunately is a part of production that doesn’t follow this route. There is probably even an ‘unhappy flow’ through the factory, with material that isn’t economical profitable to produce anymore. The hard part is to present this information in a clear and understandable way. This is mainly because steel coils can be split up, parts of coils can be welded together during the production process and every part can take a different route through the factory.
Traditional process mining can’t handle our processes properly so we want to use object centric process mining to investigate.
Data about our material and its genealogy is available in a relational database.
We are mainly interested in identifying processes that need to be improved, such as handling the same steel coil multiple times or long throughput times, and identifying possible root causes of the “unhappy flow”. Reducing transport movements and rework will of course result in a smaller CO2 footprint, as the material does not need to be transported as much and does not need to be remade, thus contributing to our sustainability targets.
So, in brief, the objectives of this assignment are to
- Investigate our processes using object centric process mining
- Identify unwanted processes
- Present this information in a dashboard for management
- Radiate the power of (object centric) process mining to the factory
For this internship it is advised to visit the Tata Steel Packaging IJmuiden site regularly, especially during the initiation phase. The student should take this in consideration.
About Tata Steel
Tata Steel in the Netherlands is committed to sustainable steel production in a clean environment. It has expressed the ambition to produce hydrogen-based green steel by 2030 and the first steps are now being taken in this direction. In addition, Tata Steel’s Roadmap Plus consists of dozens of environmental measures to improve the environment by maximum emission reduction.
The steel company forms the basis of many economic value chains and makes a substantial contribution to the economic value in the province of Noord-Holland and in the Netherlands. It is the largest and only steel producer in the Netherlands and contributes to protecting the strategic position of the Netherlands and Europe in the global steel industry.
About Tata Steel Packaging
Tinplate packaging can be recycled infinitely many times without losing quality. Tinplate is a good example of a raw material that belongs in a circular economy, where there is no waste and no raw materials and where products are reused instead of thrown away.
But tinplate also prevents waste in a different manner. Tinned products have a long shelf life and are less likely to be thrown away. This includes food, but also drinks, deodorant and paint.
Together with packaging manufacturers and brands, we are investigating how we can make our production and materials even more sustainable. We have already worked on several innovations for tin packaging, particularly in coatings that preserve products. One of our developments is “Protact”, which already has an organic coating when it rolls off our production line. This reduces solvent use and saves a step in the customer’s production process, because the material no longer has to be painted. TCCT is another new metallic coating that is applied in a more environmentally friendly way and can also replace tin, a raw material that is becoming increasingly scarce.
Please visit https://www.tatasteelnederland.com/en for more information on Tata Steel
Contact
Required courses/skills
- 2AMI20 Advanced Process Mining / Multi-Dimensional Process Mining track