American Heavy Plates, a steel plate rolling mill and plate processor located in Hannibal, Ohio, has implemented the cloud-based STRATIX metal service center software from Invera, the cloud metal ERP software solution provider. With no software modifications required, AH Plates implemented a full complement of STRATIX features including inventory management, purchasing, sales, online production planning, plate cutting processing functions, shop-floor production recording, warehouse tablet functions, job scheduling, and online shipment planning.
AH Plates produces their steel plate from steel slabs or ingots using a rolling process. These steel slabs can be from 10-12” thick or steel ingots up to 24” thick. Once the plate has been produced at their facilities, AH Plates can perform a number of value-add processes such as testing, heat treating, machining, as well as oxy plate cutting and beveling. As with many of Invera’s customers, STRATIX is able to meet all their use case needs out of the box, allowing for a quicker and more efficient implementation.
From the STRATIX Sales module, AH Plates benefits from the Order Status Desktop, which shows a comprehensive status of the customer order at a single glance. Since the plate rolling, heat treating, lab testing, and plate cutting processing steps are being recorded in the warehouse, the Sales Department can see the item’s status as it goes through each process — whether scheduled, in process, or complete — all from desktop or mobile devices).
For Production, STRATIX enables AH Plates to reduce paper use through the use of STRATIX on-line Production Planning. From the production planning screen, multiple order items can be highlighted and grouped together to create a single plate cutting job which is used to process the plate to a variety of shapes for the customer.
AH Plates also utilized STRATIX multi-step processing features to track each step of the process at their facilities using the multi-plant process routing features. As the slabs are consumed and plates are produced and continue with their processing steps, value can be attributed to each step, which leads to the accurate tracking net profitability for each order.