Outokumpu is aiming to fully digitalize its biggest factory in Tornio, Finland, transforming it into the most digitalized and most cost-competitive stainless steel operation in the industry by 2020. After Tornio, digital manufacturing is planned to roll out to Outokumpu’s other production units internationally.
With the digitalization of Tornio operations, Outokumpu aims to significantly reduce lead times to customers through step-change improvements in reliability, quality and supply chain management and to gain up to 100,000 tonnes of freed capacity from the existing production assets. The Tornio unit is already currently the biggest, most efficient and most sustainable stainless steel factory in Europe, covering the entire production chain from mining and smelting to melting, hot and cold rolling and finishing of high demanding stainless steel products.
In a multi-year partnership with Microsoft, Outokumpu is building an industrial digital platform, Outokumpu Digital Platform (ODP), based on Microsoft Azure. During the first six months of 2019, the joint Outokumpu and Microsoft project team has created this platform, already expected to bring considerable improvements in quality performance for Tornio mill.
