Oct. 3, 2006 — Quad Infotech Inc. recently completed installation of the [QMOS] Level 2 system at Gerdau Ameristeel’s St. Paul, Minn., meltshop and rolling mill.
The [QMOS] system will seamlessly coordinate production operations from the scrapyard through the meltshop, billet yard and rolling mill to the bundling and shipping of finished product, while at the same time imposing all internal and external processing specifications. [QMOS] also provides a flexible definition methodology for product quality control and testing specifications (e.g. work-center-specific specifications).
The [QMOS] meltshop system incorporates a new ladle management module that tracks ladle component lives by heats and/or hot metal contact time. The system also includes custom-written APIs for Quality departments that require spectrometer and LECO results, DI calculations and projected tensile properties, and full 24/7 on-site training and technical support during installation.
For the rolling mill, the [QMOS] system will feature incorporation of reversing stands into rolling recipes; product family trees based on stands, rolls and passes; and billet or heat-specific capability for assignment to work orders. The system will assign hold codes at the heat, billet and bundle levels, and will provide concurrent delay tracking for multiple mills in the same shop. The new system will integrate existing inventory, production and quality data into [QMOS] to provide historical data continuity.
[QMOS] program modules will also cover order entry and production scheduling for the meltshop, caster and rolling mill. The [QMOS] system will track billet inventory, and manage work orders for hot metal, billets and finished products, as well as shipping of finished products to customers.
Mill Setup Shop operations will also be coordinated by [QMOS] with the provision of a comprehensive inventory management system for rolls, guides, bearings, chocks and other important parts and equipment. The system will also facilitate setup of shop processes by providing customer-specific reports and work order management. On the production side, [QMOS] will provide real-time consumable usage, delay recording and other production parameters; billet and bundle tagging, product disposition management, shift reporting, performance analysis and countless other features.
[QMOS] will ensure that each production order meets both product and customer specifications. In a highly complex and competitive production environment, [QMOS] will enable Gerdau-Ameristeel to improve its production processes, reduce inventory and provide better customer service and support.
Quad Infotech is a software engineering and design company that specializes in the development of industrial computer software for the steel industry. Quad's unique combination of steelmaking and rolling process knowledge, combined with computer software design expertise, renders Quad's Level-2 and Level-3 software products unique in the global steel minimill market. [QMOS] has been operating in numerous steel plants throughout North America and Europe since 1994.
Gerdau-Ameristeel is the second-largest minimill steel producer in North America with annual manufacturing capacity of over 9.0 million tons of mill finished steel products. Through its vertically integrated network of 17 minimills (including one 50%-owned minimill), 17 scrap recycling facilities and 46 downstream operations, Gerdau Ameristeel primarily serves customers in the eastern two-thirds of North America.