Tag: process control

OM in the News: 500,000 Tons of Steel. 14 Jobs

The “pulpit” at Donawitz, where just 3 employees control the plant.

The Austrian village of Donawitz has been an iron-smelting center since the 1400s. With the opening of Voestalpine AG’s new rolling mill this year, the industry appears secure. “What’s less certain are the jobs,” writes Businessweek (June 26, 2017). The plant needs just 14 employees to make 500,000 tons of steel wire a year—vs. as many one thousand in a mill with similar capacity built in the 1960s.

Inside the facility, red-hot metal snakes its way along a 2,300-foot production line. Yet the floors are spotless, the only noise is a gentle hum, and most of the time the place is deserted except for 3 technicians who sit high above the line, monitoring output on a bank of flatscreens. “In the long run we will lose most of the classic blue-collar workers, people doing the hot and dirty jobs in coking plants or around the blast furnaces. This will all be automated,” says Voestalpine’s CEO.

Over the past 20 years, the number of worker-hours needed to make a ton of steel industrywide has fallen from 700 to 250, as new control processes and innovations (such as casting steel closer to the shape of the finished product) have improved productivity. From 2008 through 2015, Europe’s steel workforce shrank by almost 84,000 jobs—about 20%, and experts predict employment in the sector will decline another 20% over the coming decade.

While about 300 other workers in Donawitz carry out support roles such as shipping logistics and running the internal rail system, the mill itself is operated by 14 people. The technicians sitting in what’s called the “pulpit”—a structure like a ship’s bridge high above the plant floor—mostly watch for warning signs such as spikes in temperature or pressure.

Classroom discussion questions:

  1. What other industries are seeing a similar job compression?
  2. What skills do the new steel plant workers need?

OM in the News: Johns Hopkins’ Capacity Command Center

Johns Hopkins Hospital’s state-of-the-art, advanced hospital control center
Johns Hopkins Hospital’s state-of-the-art, advanced hospital control center

Johns Hopkins Hospital, reports Analytics Magazine (Jan.-Feb., 2017), recently launched an advanced control center to better manage patient safety, experience, volume, and the movement of patients in and out of the hospital. The Capacity Command Center incorporates systems engineering principles, which are commonly seen in aerospace, aviation and power industries, but are rare in hospitals.

In the one room center, 24 staff members work together, equipped with real-time and predictive information, and empowered to take action to prevent or resolve bottlenecks, reduce patient wait time, coordinate services, and reduce risk. The command center also houses a sophisticated system with a wall of computer monitors that provides situational awareness and triggers the center team to take immediate action. During a typical afternoon, the system receives about 500 messages/minute from 14 different hospital IT systems generating real-time data. “In the past, like most hospitals, we were dependent on traditional technology – phones, email and IT systems – to manage the hospital, assign beds, etc.,” says a hospital exec.

The technology in the command center keeps staff members informed 24/7 about when there is an influx of patients coming into the hospital, which hospital units need additional staff members, the status of how many patients are being treated, the need for and availability of beds across the hospital, the highest-priority admissions and discharges, and other essential information.

Early results demonstrate improved patient experience and operational outcomes such as: (1) 60% improvement in the ability to accept patients with complex medical conditions from other hospitals; (2) critical care team is now dispatched 63 minutes sooner to pick up patients arriving in ambulances from other hospitals; (3) patients are assigned a bed 30% faster from the ER; (4) transfer delays from the OR after a procedure have been reduced by 70%; and (5) 21% more patients are now discharged before noon.

Classroom discussion questions:

  1. Why have hospitals been slow to adopt these process control procedures used in other industries?
  2. What hospital functions could benefit from the command center concept?