Inside a North American steel mill, time is measured in molten metal. The company’s hot mill converts raw slabs into finished coils at the pace of about 35 coils per hour, approximately 20 tons per coil, selling at roughly $1,000 per ton, depending on market prices. When production stops, the losses are immediate.

“The impact to the hot mill being down is about $4,500 per minute of lost margin,” says a wireless engineer for the mill. “We produce about 35 coils per hour and roughly 20 tons per coil. Those prices fluctuate with the going price of the market and cold roll and hot roll prices. That’s a justification we can use for Wi-Fi sensors.”

Those tools include 7SIGNAL Sensors: a wireless-experience management platform that the mill’s wireless manager and his team deploy. In a business where a six-hour window separates recovery from an extended outage, wireless reliability is a production asset.

Wi-Fi performance monitoring platforms for manufacturing and logistics facilities collect and analyze wireless reliability for scanners, robots, and connected equipment. All this gear underpins operations and production. A dropped connection can stop an automated crane.

Steel mill snapshot

  • Global steel manufacturer with operations spanning dozens of countries
  • Facility dates to the early 20th century; integrates legacy infrastructure and automated systems
  • IT organization covering desktop, security, OT/ICS, and wireless across a “mini-city” that includes warehouses and steelmaking operations
  • Managing a multi-vendor environment: Cisco, Cisco Meraki, Siemens, ProSoft, and VMware/Broadcom

Challenge: Knowing what’s happening on the network

Steelmaking is, in part, a logistics challenge. Inside the mill’s facilities, cranes receive wireless instructions about which coil to pick up, where to move it, and when. A scheduling system tracks thousands of coils in a single building. If wireless connectivity falters, even briefly, manufacturing stops. If a stoppage is prolonged, lost production follows.

The challenge was knowing what was happening on the network in real time and over time, independent of the vendors whose hardware was generating that data.

7SIGNAL provides an independent view. It is a vendor-agnostic Wi-Fi monitoring platform, working alongside wireless infrastructure to deliver an endpoint perspective that infrastructure dashboards can’t capture. Getting all the devices performing well meant understanding what was happening at the edge of the network.

Solution: Getting a client-side view of Wi-Fi

The mill deployed 7SIGNAL Sensors throughout its facilities, placing independent monitors in the wireless environment that collect data from the device’s perspective, not the access point.

The 7SIGNAL monitors are patented sensors, RF hardware appliances deployed on-site as a monitoring layer, with a single sensor capable of monitoring up to six access points continuously.

Simultaneously proactive and reactive

“If you set up the 7SIGNAL tool to do events and alarms, then you’re commissioning that tool to give information to show data and be almost proactive,” the wireless manager says. “Those reports offer trends to help predict where problems are. We can set thresholds.”

The sensor data enables the mill’s wireless manager to catch access points that appear functional in Cisco Prime Infrastructure but are dropping clients. This is a critical distinction in an environment where a dropped connection can stop a crane.

Eliminating finger-pointing

Wireless problems can trigger a cycle of blame between teams. Workers question the network. An IT team looks to the endpoint, or application. Without objective data, each group points elsewhere and resolution drags out.

“With 7SIGNAL, there is far less finger-pointing,” the wireless manager notes. “7SIGNAL tells you what’s wrong.”

Armed with evidence, the mill’s IT team can direct the right people to the right fix without debates. Minutes matter when downtime can add up to an hours-long lapse in production.

Validating coverage

“I use 7SIGNAL for base level testing and to define coverage without having to do reactive troubleshooting,” the wireless manager says. “Before buying 7SIGNAL, I’d tell a technician to go out with a spectrum analyzer, laptops, and wait in the mill for a problem to happen. It’s a proactive approach now.”

“7SIGNAL pays for itself 10 times over when we avoid a typical downtime event,” says the mill’s wireless manager.

See the full story

Read the complete steel mill case study, or see how 7SIGNAL supports Wi-Fi in manufacturing environments.