WSE Facts Letter

Wengert Software Engineering, Inc. Fax Update Letter

Vol. 6 No. 12

December 2000

Wengert adds "Directed Coil Putaway" Functionality to its Bell Annealing Coil Tracker (BACT) Application


Pittsburgh, PA

Wengert Software Engineering, Inc. has enhanced its BACT coil inventory management system so that it now informs the crane operator where he should place any given coil in inventory. This "Directed Coil Putaway" feature reduces the amount of "digging" later on when the coil is required for a batch annealing charge. "Digging" occurs when the crane operator must move other coils in inventory in order to get to the coil required for the charge. Ideally, the crane operator would never need to move one coil in order to get at another. Studies have clearly shown that reducing the number of times that a coil is handled greatly reduces the risk of damaging the coil.

The Bell Annealing Coil Tracker (BACT) system is currently being used by US Steel Mon Valley Works in combination with the Bell Annealing Stack Builder (BASB) application. BASB determines the most efficient stacking of coils into charges and then presents these charges to the crane operator via the BACT terminal installed on the crane. Radio frequency (RF) ethernet is used to communicate between the BACT terminal and the central BASB relational database. The systems have been running at US Steel for well over a year and have improved shop through-put while simultaneously reducing labor costs and improving on-time product shipments.

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