AGIS: Building a future-proof manufacturing ecosystem to optimize production planning and execution
Pursuing efficiency in production planning and execution
As a large bespoke producer of coated flat steel in the Gulf Cooperation Council, Al Ghurair Iron and Steel LLC (AGIS) must manage a highly complex production planning and execution environment. SAP Business Technology Platform, SAP Build solutions, and SAP Business AI features along with an SAP Cloud ERP Private solution as a digital core allow the company to automate and digitalize production planning and execution. This significantly enhances its efficiency.
| Industry | Region | Company Size | Partner |
| Mill products | Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates | 450 employees | Deloitte & Touche Middle East Limited |
efficiency increase in production planning and implementation.
orders processed daily.
reduction in order processing time.
General Manager Commercial, Al Ghurair Iron & Steel LLC
Pioneering technology transformation in production planning
Al Ghurair Iron & Steel LLC (AGIS) manufactures more than 500,000 metric tons of flat-steel galvanized coils annually, primarily for industrial applications in the construction sector. Its unique selling point is the flexibility it offers customers in manufacturing made-to-order steel products specific to their requirements for thickness, width, coating, and special requests. With no standard stock or locally available raw materials, AGIS must match multiple customer requirements with materials imported from multiple steel mills around the world, resulting in a highly complex production planning environment. Its key challenge was to maximize its yield and use of its production lines while optimizing costs and integrating its shop-floor manufacturing execution and reporting systems. With more than 250 customer orders per month and production of more than 500,000 metric tons, AGIS needed to make its production planning and execution more efficient.
AGIS spearheads the steel industry’s commitment to contributing to the technology transformation program launched by the United Arab Emirates government. In examining its own digital transformation journey, most of the company’s processes were running on its legacy ERP system, but production planning was separate and manually executed with Microsoft Excel–based spreadsheets. Its production planning team had to manage constant adjustments to meet changing customer needs, delays due to long transit times of raw materials, and fluctuating sales trends. Additionally, its manufacturing execution team was using multiple redundant system processes, which significantly affected its efficiency. The fragmented and inefficient planning and execution processes hindered AGIS’s ability to scale its production capacity effectively, meet production goals, and respond swiftly to market demands. AGIS needed solutions that could address its complex requirements to enable more-robust and leaner processes and integrate its systems in a single place.
General Manager Commercial, Al Ghurair Iron & Steel LLC
Creating customization, automation, and integration capabilities
AGIS opted for SAP Cloud ERP Private to enable a digital core, using the Cloud Integration capability in SAP Integration Suite to integrate with its third-party manufacturing execution system. However, given its lack of stock coupled with bespoke products, AGIS was unable to use the standard production planning capability in its ERP system. Recognizing that SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) could help it deliver world-class manufacturing processes, AGIS developed its production planning and quality management processes on the platform. It also adopted SAP Build solutions to introduce advanced dashboards that orchestrate processes and leverage AI-driven automation. These digital workspaces provide personalized, role-based access to information. AGIS has now developed user-friendly dashboards to enhance decision-making, including a smart planning dashboard for advanced planning and scheduling, as well as a smart execution dashboard serving as a manufacturing command center.
The steel company is able to match product attributes with customer requirements while scheduling production based on machine availability and parameters such as productivity, yield, width, grade, and thickness. With SAP Business AI, AGIS can map complex product metrics with variable requirement attributes against its customer orders in real time and automate more than 300 calculations during order planning and execution. It can track raw material availability and stock at customs while recommending raw material batches to planners based on more than 90 attribute variations. And it can propose appropriate production lines according to capacity, breakdowns, and line efficiencies, increasing machine productivity. AGIS plans to extend these capabilities over time.
Deloitte & Touche Middle East Limited partnered with AGIS in the implementation project, demonstrating a thorough understanding of the steel manufacturer’s business requirements. Deloitte assisted with adopting a clean core approach at AGIS as well as designing, implementing, and deploying SAP Cloud ERP Private and SAP BTP. Deloitte’s team recognized the immense potential of SAP BTP to drive true enterprise transformation. By harnessing these technologies, it successfully delivered a future-ready solution that addresses manufacturing excellence at AGIS.
General Manager Commercial, Al Ghurair Iron & Steel LLC
Boosting capacity while trimming order processing time
As a result of its cloud-based architecture and automation of business processes, AGIS has been able to improve production planning and execution, driving efficiency in its activities. Increasing visibility into its raw material availability, production attributes, and machine availability has allowed the company to maximize production and enhance its predictive asset maintenance. Replacing multiple screens with a single dashboard enables operators on the shop floor to use clear, real-time data to create better-quality bespoke products. This also improves the employee experience.
Meanwhile, AGIS’s planners can make designated machines available for certain products based on agreed parameters. Automating production planning improves material traceability and reduces wastage while freeing up the company’s planners to carry out more value-adding tasks. Furthermore, its quality controllers are benefiting from automated screening and quality decision proposals based on more than 120 business-logic and quality parameters in line with industry standards. This reduces quality assurance time and enhances overall product quality.
AGIS has reduced its order processing time by almost 40%. It can now process and schedule orders on each production line in less than five minutes, whereas this used to take between 10 minutes and 15 minutes. And it can handle more than 1,800 orders each day. By replacing manual inputs and analysis with real-time information, AGIS can accurately monitor its energy and water consumption. This helps the company enhance its sustainability reporting and make more-informed decisions in meeting its sustainability goals.
The innovative use of SAP BTP and SAP Business AI to digitalize and automate production planning and execution processes was recognized at the competitive SAP Innovation Awards, where AGIS won the award in the “Transformation Titan” category. Not only did this acknowledge the company’s innovative, impactful use case, but it also helped with its change management efforts.
General Manager Commercial, Al Ghurair Iron & Steel LLC
Want to know more about AGIS?
Building a Futuristic Manufacturing Ecosystem with SAP BTP and Business AI (SAP Innovation Awards)
Featured partner
Deloitte & Touche Middle East Limited helped AGIS optimize its manufacturing process by proposing key design aspects in the implementation project. The consultancy collaborated with AGIS’s experts in refining the company’s SAP solutions to meet operational needs and enhancing the integrations with procurement, plant maintenance, and environmental, health, and safety processes