Case Study Quality control and sustainability at Tata Steel Nederland
Modernized production with PSImetals
Tata Steel Nederland is one of Europe’s leading steel producers, known for its high-quality flat steel products. The company serves automotive, packaging, construction, and engineering industries worldwide, with a strong focus on innovation, digitalization, sustainability, and reducing CO2 emissions in steel production. Central to this focus is Tata Steel's ambition to become a green, clean, and circular steel company.
At its steel plant in IJmuiden, Tata Steel Nederland sought to modernize its steel production IT environment into a more modern Smart Steel Factory. The goal was to improve the workflows, product quality, decision-making, and reduce scrap, directly supporting the overarching strategy to become a greener, cleaner, and circular steel company.
Challenges Tata Steel encountered
Before implementing PSImetals Production and Quality Execution, Tata Steel Nederland relied on outdated legacy systems that were increasingly difficult to maintain. Tata Steel aimed to unify its production management with a single, rule-driven system that would streamline quality decisions, support corrective actions, and reinforce sustainability by reducing scrap and improving process transparency.
Approaches PSI and Tata Steel took to resolve the challenge
Tata Steel Nederland implemented PSImetals Production & Quality Execution, achieving an integrated solution for heat and slab qualification across the basic oxygen furnace (BOF), secondary metallurgy, and continuous casting. Bringing heat and slab qualification into this modern production execution system (PSImetals) means the entire plant is now running on modern, integrated PSI system. This modern setup is crucial, as it makes the future transition to new installations for green steel production significantly easier than it would have been with the rigid, fragmented systems of the Mainframe era.
Core features include:
- A consolidated GUI that presents all relevant data (chemical composition, quality parameters, and grading logic) in one interface.
- A Quality Deviations Management function to recommend alternative grades when deviations occur, enabling faster, and more confident decisions.
- Seamless integration with PSI repository and framework, ensuring accurate registration of each qualified heat and slab, which enhanced traceability.
- Deployment of PSI service manager interfaces for downstream data access, integrating PSImetals with Level 2 and Level 4 systems, and reporting archives for accurate financial and operational insights.
![[Translate to English:] PSImetals Quality Indicators im Software-Interface, angezeigt auf einem Laptop.](/fileadmin/images/de/referenzen/case_studies/PIM/Advanced_Quality_Indicators.png "PSImetals Quality Indicators shown in the PSI software interface on a laptop.")
Results achieved following PSImetals implementation
- By moving to a single, unified system, Tata Steel Nederland significantly improved decision-making efficiency and operator experience.
- Legacy systems were eliminated, reducing complexity and maintenance overhead.
- The rules-based regrading capability minimized scrap generation, directly supporting Tata Steel's sustainability goals and the drive towards a circular economy, while ensuring high metallurgical quality and planning reliability.
- By enabling intelligent reclassifications and optimized melting, PSImetals contributes by preventing or reducing the production of incorrect material (i.e., material that has to be downgraded to scrap) while maintaining high quality, directly contributing to a more circular and resource-efficient operation
The implemented PSImetals solutions ensure efficiency, compliance and the highest quality standards, while building an agile, future-proof digital platform needed to realize our ambition of becoming a green, clean, and circular steel producer,” says Erik Hermans, Project Lead, Tata Smart Steel Factory.
Conclusion
Through PSImetals, Tata Steel Nederland has advanced its digital transformation and elevated its standards for quality, sustainability, and operational control. This modernization not only provides immediate benefits in efficiency and scrap reduction but also lays the digital foundation necessary to achieve Tata Steel's key strategic goal of becoming a green, clean, and circular steel company. PSI’s role in delivering a robust, integrated solution shows how modern production execution systems can redefine performance industries with a complex production structure where quality is of high standard.
