About the client

Building collaborative relationships 

Tata Steel is one of the world's most geographically diversified steel producers, with operations in 26 countries and commercial offices in more than 35 countries, and an annual crude steel capacity of 34 million tonnes per annum.

Tata Steel Europe (TSE) builds collaborative relationships and serves many demanding markets worldwide, focusing on creating new success for its diverse customer base.

The challenge

Seeking better control over product quality assurance process

The steel industry is facing global overcapacity, reduction in steel prices, nonadherence to on time in full (OTIF) demand fulfilment and low market demand leading to low EBITDA for steel manufacturers. Due to aging and disparate legacy systems, manufacturers—including our valued customer—did not have integrated IT tools to improve operational efficiency. Therefore, they could not reduce manufacturing costs, enhance value chain visibility and quality, improve throughput, and meet customer expectations.

Tata Steel Europe (TSE) relies heavily on its manufacturing systems. TSE was facing challenges in their product quality assurance process. This directly impacted customer satisfaction for the prime material and sale prospects for the non-prime material.

Enterprise resource planning (ERP)—with customer-specific information and product strategies—helps gain better control over product quality. TSE needed to reimagine and transform its assurance processes to enable the evolving supply chain strategies, such as make-to-availability (MTA), and finish-to-order (FTO), all of which are vital to thrive in a highly competitive industry.  

To overcome these challenges, TSE was looking for a smart, overarching quality engine at the ERP level that served as a barometer of product quality for shipped deliveries. TSE chose to partner with TCS as it aimed to transform its product quality assurance platform.

TCS’ solution

TCS’ mass-customized innovative solution

TCS and TSE jointly developed an innovative framework—Final customer check (FCC), with in-built intelligence. TCS’ manufacturing domain knowledge coupled with its understanding of industry pain areas, led the way for this collaboration. 

TCS' subject matter experts and business stakeholders worked closely with the TSE team to create business rules for a dynamic and scalable FCC engine. They drafted the product vision and the complete roadmap to overhaul the product quality assurance process. TCS and TSE executed the multi-phase project in an agile manner to improve customer satisfaction, reduce material returns, and accelerate business growth and outcomes.

The core components of the framework are:

• An automated quality assurance engine at the ERP layer acts as an enabler for new supply chain strategies and revenue streams. 

• The complex rule-driven, dynamic engine compares mechanical, chemical, dimensional, and coating properties of the material and provides automatic clearance. Intuitive and interactive dashboards with inherent intelligence address FCC deviations for the users, helping them make better decisions with proper authorization and justification. 

• An enabler for forecast-driven, profitable supply chain strategies and new revenue streams of selling prime and non-prime materials through the online webshop (e-Sales), the solution drives higher margins due to reduced lead times.

• The Final customer check (FCC) solution is the controller of final-go to confirm if the product is qualified for delivery. It is seamlessly integrated with manufacturing, logistics, quality, and certification systems.

• Real-time data analytics helps identify pain areas, improving yield and performance. This mass-customized innovation leverages scalable industry-specific designs that can be set up in other manufacturing companies.

Business outcomes

Tata Steel improves product quality and chances of material sale

TCS’ expertise in the manufacturing domain and agile delivery approach helped TSE reimagine its manufacturing systems and product quality. Tata Steel successfully realized its vision of higher adoption of the MTA and FTO strategies. 

When executed in entirety, this mega transformation project is expected to benefit TSE in the areas of material returns reduction, scrap reduction, revenue uplift through the enablement of new supply chains, regulatory compliance, and overall plant efficiency, delivery performance, and output quality. 

TCS' contextual knowledge of the client's priorities, gained over a decade-long-partnership with TSE, helped evaluate the core challenges comprehensively and devise a holistic product roadmap.