Dive Brief:
- Nucor is investing in automation to manufacture its steel products as it looks to cut costs and boost factory safety, the company’s CEO Leon Topalian said on a Q2 earnings call on July 22.
- As part of its automation investment, Nucor is working on automating its material handling equipment at multiple plants, including upcoming plants in Indiana and Alabama.
- “We're seeing the potential applications of AI and automation in a whole raft of different areas of our businesses, technologies that we're using to deploy to create safer outcomes from our team members, to create cost advantages, to create efficiencies,” Topalian said on the call.
Dive Insight:
The steel giant highlighted it had the safest first half of any year in the company’s history, with 52 of its 109 divisions accomplishing Nucor’s ultimate goal of zero recordable injuries.
In its towers and structures business unit, which the company expanded in 2022, Nucor is building two utility structures production plants in Crawfordsville, Indiana, and Decatur, Alabama. The plants will feature automated material handling equipment, as well as robotic plasma and weld cells, EVP of New Markets and Innovation Chad Utermark said on the call.
“As a reminder, many of our downstream businesses in Nucor face these demand fluctuations through the cycle,” Utermark said. “And what we are seeing is that automation in key manufacturing areas can really help us navigate that demand fluctuation so that we can really take care of our customers.”
Nucor’s steel products segment saw larger volumes but a lower average selling price due to higher material costs, Nucor noted in its earnings presentation. Overall, Nucor’s sales decreased 15% year over year to $8.1 billion in Q2.
The steel company is also using AI at a steel mill in Memphis, Tennessee, to optimize production scheduling.
“We've been able to reduce the man hours committed to this process by about 80% through the use of AI,” EVP of Fabricated Construction Products John Hollatz said on the call.
In other areas of automation, Nucor has been developing a robotic joist line at its Vulcraft, South Carolina, facility over the past six years. Joist production traditionally is a very labor-intensive process, but the robotic technologies have helped Nucor cut costs and create operational efficiencies, Hollatz said.
“This new robotic line, which we have been operating now for about one year, utilizes patented robotics and vision technology, to perform the assembly and welding of joist,” Hollatz said. “This is really a game changer for our team, and we're looking to grow this across the rest of our joist operations in the future.”
Other steel companies are investing in automation as well. US Steel is investing in automated storage and retrieval systems, manufactured by Pittsburgh-based Freespace Robotics, the company announced in March.
