Increasing revenue by 47 percent and the project portfolio by 360 percent while reducing lead time from 130 to 80 days

Leading the copper components market

Founded in 1971, CECAL is one of the leading global companies in the copper components sector for the steel and base metallurgy industry, standing out for the quality of its products and highly complex engineering projects.

With approximately 400 employees, its main plant is located in Lorena, São Paulo, Brazil, the company also has branches in Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais and Lima, Peru.

CECAL is known for its pioneering work in engineering projects and for offering products with cutting-edge technology and exceptional quality. Its main products are cast copper parts for blast furnaces, converters and electric furnaces, which are widely used by domestic steel and engineering and international companies, such as CSN, Gerdau, Usiminas, Danieli Corus, Tata Steel, Hatch, Linde, Primetals, Paul Wurth, Ternium and others.

With an engineer-to-order (ETO) production orientation, the CECAL plant has casting, machining, welding, boiler making, testing and trials processes and digital radiography, which is carried out in a bunker fully integrated into production.

To continue innovating and overcome production challenges, CECAL teamed up with NEO Digital Industries (NEO), a Siemens Digital Industries Software expert partner, and leveraged Opcenter™ software. Opcenter is part of the Siemens Xcelerator business platform of software, hardware and services.

Facing problems with production scheduling and growth

CECAL faced several challenges in its production, the main one being production scheduling, which was carried out using several spreadsheets. This scheduling model generated frequent delays that were not detectable in advance, which significantly impacted the production chain.

Further, the company has been experiencing an increase in revenue, combined with new product lines. Consequently, it is also dealing with a growth in processes and labor, including new production areas and machinery, which generates greater complexity.

The company made a strategic decision to invest in integrated processes across departments, targeting shorter lead times, lower work-in-process (WIP) inventory, more accurate delivery commitments and better overall production visibility. This bold step came in a challenging ETO context, with over 17,000 stock keeping units (SKUs) and product structures that can involve up to 60 individual items per part.

CECAL also faced challenges related to the production planning and scheduling processes within the factory, as changes in the schedule occur throughout the week. This generates a long unplanned set up time and desynchronizes the delivery of purchased and cast raw materials for production and final assembly. As a result,
delays were frequent and the average lead time was 130 days.

To overcome these challenges, CECAL implemented several changes in its production processes, investing in technology and automation and strengthening communication between departments. Thus, it joined forces with Siemens and NEO to implement Opcenter Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS) software with a focus on production scheduling.

Integrating a solution to streamline planning and scheduling

During the pandemic, CECAL started a project to solve its production challenges. In September 2020, the company held the APS development kickoff, which went live in May 2021. CECAL designed the APS to serve the Lorena plant, focusing on changes to the production planning and scheduling, workshop and foundry.

To implement the solution, CECAL’s other systems, the manufacturing execution system (MES) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) carried out the integrations.

The company applied Opcenter APS in all production sectors of the machining process, which are more standardized and have a stock of casted parts. Therefore, a pull manner was used to carry out the casting schedule, based on the schedule of subsequent processes. Thus, the casting process, which is more manual than the others (with parts weighing up to 15 tons), knows the sequence and quantity the company must deliver for each subsequent resource. The first few weeks were spent adjusting and adapting production schedule and production.

CECAL designed customizations to adapt to production restrictions, including analyzing raw material availability, digital radiography bunker entry and exit, welded parts cooling time (the next process can only start after a minimum wait for welding), time for moving parts between warehouses and identifying setups according to product families.

Improving APS leads to increased revenue growth

Over the last three years, the company has seen a significant increase in its revenue, registering a growth of 47 percent. Additionally, the project portfolio’s value has increased by 360 percent in the same period. Using Opcenter APS enabled this growth with the least possible number of losses.

Reducing lead time was a positive gain, dropping from 130 to 80 days on average, about 38 percent, allowing for greater product delivery agility and a better cash conversion cycle, a relevant aspect in ETO industries with high raw material costs.

This result was possible thanks to the new weekly schedule within Opcenter APS, which reduced scheduling efforts from one week to one and a half days.

“With Opcenter APS, we have clearer visibility of the factory floor,” says Guilherme Lage, production scheduling manager at CECAL. “This allows us to meet deadlines more accurately and to manage production more organized.”

With the new programming methodology, the company also had greater reliability for evolving production and greater assertiveness in programming, which synchronized component operations for assembly and identified bottlenecks in the short to medium term. This new programming method also improved adherence and reduced cast part inventory volume by 50 percent.

Currently, the foundry only produces to meet the workshop’s needs.

Gearing up to tackle future challenges

In the future, CECAL seeks to provide long-term visibility of its programming, a difficult task currently underway. This is challenging given that many components it needs to produce do not yet have a design or registration. The goal is to see the future occupancy at the plant, over a horizon of more than one year, including simulations of orders that are still in the quotation phase. Additionally, CECAL and NEO are continuing to work together on other improvements like dealing with situations where the foundry becomes a bottleneck, as well as limiting the anticipation of programming of future demands.