Severstal is implementing a digital quality management system

2023: Digitalization of product quality control

On September 28, 2023, Severstal announced that it was implementing a large-scale project to digitalize product quality control. The company's experts have developed a system for end-to-end automatic certification of rolled metal products. The volume of investments amounted to about 1.3 billion rubles.

The development of a comprehensive quality control system was a response to a number of challenges - both in terms of creating and mastering technologically complex new types of products, and meeting the growing requirements of customers, including in new market segments for us. The use of traditional methods alone did not solve these problems. The key goal of the project was the creation of a single system in which every deviation ever detected will be monitored. The set of digital tools works in order to help our employee decide on the suitability of rolled metal based on the previously inaccessible large amount of information received at all stages of manufacture. We have achieved digital control of the production of about half of the volume of metal products produced per year, - said Pyotr Mishnev, Director of Technical Development and Quality of Severstal.

The implementation of the project makes it possible to provide a number of significant advantages for the company's customers. These include quality assurance for 100% of the product length due to continuous measuring systems and minimization of the human factor, reduction of the customer's sorting losses due to improvement of the basic product quality, quick response to deviations and delivery on time. For the period from 2018 to 2022, the share of received notifications from customers for four types of products covered by the system decreased by 55%.

The quality control system includes dozens of digital tools on the life path of product creation. These include equipping industrial units with meters using technologies computer vision and, artificial intelligence which are responsible for fixing visible deviations. The developed predictive models perform calculations of the probability of occurrence of defects invisible to the human eye based on technological parameters. Metal tracking systems provide binding data to each meter of a specific product, and incident recording systems monitor critical areas that affect its quality. Their use makes it possible to eliminate the human factor in matters related to the correct operation of equipment and certification, as well as to ensure a timely response to deviations in technological processes.

Based on the data obtained, the decision on the suitability of rolled metal is recommended by the Sherlock auto-certification system. The digital assistant has tools for finding the root causes of quality deviations, analyzing trends and building models, ensures the availability of data for any user and the ability to quickly select orders for manufactured and on-hand products for incoming orders. The results of the system application are not only a decrease in the number of notifications of deviations and internal losses, but also an increase in the accuracy of delivery times.

The project for the introduction of a digital auto-certification system has been going on for seven years. During this time, it covered the through chain of production of galvanized rolled products, hot-rolled rolled products, etched rolled products, commercial slabs. At the same time, 43% of ever detected defects are monitored. The system is planned to be fully completed by 2028.

Severstal's team of experts with the necessary competencies from the Technical Development and Quality Directorate, the production divisions of Cherepovets Steel Mill, as well as the specialized companies Severstal Digital and Severstal-Infocom are implementing initiatives.