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Newsletter #2 : Meet our pilots - BRC

FACTLOG Pilot-Steel Manufacturer - BRC Limited

BRC limited is a steel manufacturer of reinforcement rebar to the construction industry in the UK, the company is taking part in FACTLOG to find innovation in the way it operates day to day through the concept of digital twinning.

BRC is a steel rebar fabricator that manufactures various shapes of rebar for the construction industry in the UK to British Standard BS8666. Whilst the product is quite simplistic in its application requirements, the processes used by BRC to achieve this can be complex. Decision-making is done mainly through the experience and knowledge of employees with the assistant of IT Systems such as MES and enterprise business software.
BRC’s current process is predominately based on manual operation with various semi-automated systems that require monitoring or manual entry. This creates challenges with various routes of communication being used to convey the information needed to make day-to-day decisions, such as machine breakdowns, planning and delivery timings.
The objective for BRC participation in EU grant project FACTLOG is to look further into the opportunities of effective deployment of industry 4.0 techniques and achieve the aim of digital twinning our factory floor operation with the following desired outcomes:

  1.  Real-time view of the factory floor within office environments where equipment such as cranes and fabrication machines can be monitored for operational performance, predicting breakdowns and therefore allowing for preventative actions to take place.
  2. Production optimization solutions through AI cognition for best possible rebar production performance with accurate predictions of production timings, based on the market demand for a bespoke service that includes a vast combination of product shapes and dimensions.

Based on these two outcomes, this would then enable a production plan to be produced on a daily basis that takes all current conditions of the factory floor into account to produce a more accurate day-to-day plan, delivery schedule, make a more efficient process and provide a more effective service to our customers.