Refractories 4.0

The full digitalization of industry—also known as “Industry 4.0”—promises significant efficiency gains and will also trigger changes. This development has already started to have an impact on refractory operations in steel plants: smart automation, digitalized processes, and big data analysis are changing the working environment. Such systems can reduce manpower in harsh or dangerous working environments and provide more traceable and reliable data for decision making. Data lakes consisting of process, application, consumption, and production data enable smart systems to calculate process influences on refractory performance and consequently to manage a consumption triggered supply chain. New manufacturing processes like additive manufacturing have the potential to increase customizing and localizing of refractory production. A fully digital value chain requires new and closely integrated business approach with bidirectional data flow to deliver its benefits to the full extent.