OREANDA-NEWS. October 28, 2011. The automobile manufacturers can know well the production of the plates needed in producing the automobile models and the stock conditions at home, and realize the automatic order for the materials which are to be out of stock to achieve the purpose of reducing the risk of the stock and the cost. The success results from the joint development of Baosteel and an automobile manufacturer recently and the utility of the first domestic visualization of automobile steel demand-pull system. With the test run of the system containing seven patents, the new model of deepening cooperation in supply chain of the iron and steel enterprises and the automobile enterprises in our country has been created, reported the press-centre of Baosteel.

The automobile enterprise and Baosteel both have independent supply chain system, but the two systems are mutually exclusive, so the real-time information sharing can not be realized. The information transfmission between the two systems can only be input manually, while the manual input enjoys high error rate and low efficiency and easily causes the information transmission not in time. The delaying of the information transmission and the asymmetry of the information make Baosteel have to improve the inventory level to avoid the emergence of out of stock conditions, causing the high cost of the stock management of the enterprise and the users.

In response, the project team is composed of the units such as Baosteel International Steel Trade Company, Shanghai Bao-Mit, Baosteel car plate sales, Eastern Steel and Baosight etc. to take the customer demand as the center, actively carry out the supply chain construction and jointly develop the common construction of the supply chain information system together with the user. On the base of listening to the opinions of the users many times and penetrating deeply into the user's site to dig potential demand point, the team members have overcome many difficulties such as more supply chain departments, more information interfaces, more plan types and the network being not smooth etc. to research and develop the visualization of automobile steel demand-pull system within nearly two years of time.

The system has realized the seamless connection of the whole process of the supply chain betweem Baosteel and the automobile enterprise to make the manufacturer and the user realize the visualization of real-time information sharing in the purchasing and supplying link. The automobile enterprise can inquire about and master its own material demand conditions and the production and stock conditions of Baosteel at real time so as to know each link fairly well. While Baosteel knows each model of the users and the production information of each component more visually according to the system prompt to generate the accurate material demand information of the users in order to arrange its own production plan and realize the car production scheduling plan automatically generating material supply plan to make Baosteel and the users form an organic whole.

In Baosteel International Trade Company, the business people showed the reporter the highlight of this visualization system. With the click of a mouse, all the parts of the car plates used in a certain model of the automobile manufacturer were displayed in three-dimensional way. With another click on the part of the car body, its use state and the maintenance time of the current stock of  the automobile manufacturer were all displayed on the computer screen clearly, in which, on a display interface similar to oil gauge of the car dashboard, there are three colours red, yellow and green respectively presenting three stock statuses "to be out of stock soon", "out of stock warning" and "security" that the users and Baosteel can see.

According to the status display, the system can analyse the automobile components in the stage of "material lack warning", determine the type and the specification of the steel needed by the component, calculate the supplementary volume of the needed steel and realize the automatic order. The Steel Trade Company communicates the ordering information to the factory in time and organizes production in order. This changes the status of easily generating errors and low efficiency due to manual information input, and save a great deal of manual purchasing and supplying communication between the users and Baosteel.  The system can also optimize the inventory structure, reduce the inventory level gradually, truly achieve the fine inventory management, ensure the users to realize the lowest level of the material stock, reduce the stock cost of Baosteel and finally reduce the risk of the two sides through the trace analysis of the historical data and the changes of the new production plan.

The automobile manufacturer said that with the help of the system, they could master the stock and production status of Baosteel at real time, which greatly improved the work efficiency. At the same time, the system seamlessly connected the supply chain and the production plan of the factory, reduced inventory and saved the funds occupied on the premise of ensuing the safety supply.

It is reported that Baosteel is gradually optimizing the system and promoting it to other industry at the same time of meeting the use requirements of the automobile users.