Win over Business with Continuous Improvement

The steel manufacturing company Corus focuses on meeting the needs of its worldwide customers and providing innovative solutions. It manufactures processes and distributes steel and aluminium products worldwide.

Corus is a subsidiary of Tata Steel, part of the giant Indian conglomerate. Tata Group includes businesses in many industries - for example, chemicals, automotive, telecommunications, leisure and consumer goods.

Producing large volumes helps to drive down the costs of running huge and expensive steel plant. Overall, this results in steel being a relatively inexpensive product, typically around 50 pence per kilogram, about the same as a kilogram of potatoes. In a major building project, such as a shopping complex, the cost of the steel can be as little as 5% of the overall cost of the project. Because of these issues, CCI needs to differentiate its business from its competitors in order to continue to grow.

CCI’s business strategy is to produce quality steel to satisfy customer requirements, focusing on delivering products at the right time in order to secure profitable business. A key challenge is to meet the increasing demands for more steel, at increasing levels of quality and to comply with more demanding delivery requirements. It would be straightforward to meet these challenges using brand-new facilities. However, a new ‘greenfield site’ steel mill could cost more than £300 million to build.

Continuous Improvement is often referred to by the Japanese word ‘Kaizen’. Kaizen means ‘change for the better’ and covers all processes in an organisation. These include engineering, IT, financial, commercial and customer service processes, as well as manufacturing. raymond mill:http://www.hxjqchina.com/product-list_22.html
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Everyone has the opportunity to eliminate waste. This is any activity or process that does not add value. A key question to define waste is ‘would a customer pay for that process?’ Production processes that minimise waste are referred to as ‘lean production’. In these processes, the aim is to use less of everything, for example, space, materials or time.

CCI in Scunthorpe is looking to reduce waste in its plate manufacturing process. It has adopted the concept of ‘flow’. This means that the products are ‘pulled’ through the process according to customer demand. An organisation needs to know where it is going in order to be able to put in place the resources it needs to achieve its plans of ore beneficiation machines. This is set out in a vision. Scunthorpe plate mill has set out a 5-year vision improvement plan which will help in the process of developing a CI culture for the business.

CI working requires everyone to think differently about the way they work. It was recognised that people might be resistant and cling on to old ways of working. The key was getting all workers to see change as their responsibility in the production process of ball mill. The CI coaches support the teams and individuals and promote or ‘champion’ new ways of working.

Continuous Improvement helps Corus to provide quality products and services for customers with on time delivery. It aims to improve operational demands to fulfill customer expectations and out-perform competitors.