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I'm a Materials Engineer that works in an industrial plant (Steel Mill). Similar issues in this line of work. Latency is a huge issue here. What you put into t

I'm a Materials Engineer that works in an industrial plant (Steel Mill). Similar issues in this line of work. Latency is a huge issue here. What you put into the Blast Furnace can take 8+ hours to propagate through. So when you are trying to react due to a quality issue can take a long time until you see the effect of the change you've just made. Online modelling and process simulation plays a big role here. Supply is an issue as well getting an ore/coal shipment in can have 20+ day lead time. These boats are huge can take days to fully discharge them even things like docking space on the berth needs to be optimized and appropriately scheduled... A lot of people can't grasp the sheer scale of our operation it is one thing to read a number on a page and another to walk the length of a conveyor and see what 500 Tonnes Per Hour actually looks like as it is going past you...

froindt 9y ago
I've also worked in an "insane scale" plant and totally relate. I've been in two facilities where it took over 5 weeks to get product through from start to finish. One made big things, one made small things. Literal square footage to store stuff is sometimes the reason you cannot produce more stuff. Some items have 2 month lead times, which really slows down the ability to move fast. I think most people could look at one aspect and determine a fix for when that isn't working well, but it takes much more to understand how the whole system reacts and how to keep production going reasonably well.