BIG DATA USE CASE
Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works (MMK), Russia’s third largest steel works, is to save more than £3 million in steelmaking costs by using a machine learning and big data analytics service from Yandex Data Factory.
MMK produced 12.2 million tons of crude steel and 11.2 million tons of commercial steel products in 2015, meaning that even small efficiencies in raw material costs would yield enormous savings. Yandex Data Factory therefore created a machine learning service that uses seven years of MMK’s granular steel-making records, with more being added, to predict the optimal combination of ferroalloys needed to produce specific steel grades with international standard chemical compositions, and at the lowest cost for each specific smelting. These insights and practical recommendations enabled MMK to achieve an average decrease of 5% in ferroalloy use, equating to annual savings of more than £3 million, while maintaining the high quality of steel produced.
MMK is a pioneer amongst the industrial companies of Russia in the application of digital technologies. Our work with Yandex Data Factory is a new wave in industrial automation with the use of big data analytics,” said Sergey Sulimov, Deputy CEO for Finance and Economy at MMK. “We believe that the possibilities of mathematical models using big data analytics, as well as the rapid development of IoT technologies, will reduce the costs of industrial companies by 5-10% over the next 3-5 years.”
The Yandex Data Factory service receives data on the composition of the working mixture, compares it to the required chemical composition of the output steel, and then uses the data on MMK’s historical smeltings to make real-time recommendations on the amount of ferroalloy and supplementary materials needed to produce the necessary end products at lowest cost.
MMK’s forward thinking in the use of machine learning is a core reason for the successes we have seen and delivered, and we are looking forward to continuing our work together,” said Alexander Khaytin, Chief Operating Officer of Yandex Data Factory. “The commercial value that this project delivered shows the importance of moving from talking about the better, but abstract, tomorrow of the industry to practical problem solving. We are confident that others will see this as an example of leading the way in an industry with the application of new technologies.”
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