The Problem
Discover how one of the world’s largest steel companies, with operations spanning 16 countries and a workforce of 150,000+ employees, leveraged 7SIGNAL to build an evergreen Wi-Fi environment, increase employee productivity, and reduce cost fluctuation risks.
At 7SIGNAL, we help companies across countless industries increase employee productivity, enhance operational efficiencies, and increase the ROI of IoT by providing state-of-the-art Wi-Fi optimization solutions. While every company comes to us with a unique set of challenges, some are considerably more complex than others.
For example, a leading steel company came to us with a substantial Wi-Fi-related conundrum. They have a massive operation based in North America, with 150,000+ employees operating across hundreds of business units that need to remain reliably connected at all times. Their immense campus has hundreds of specialized environments, including industrial facilities, research and development centers, and truck marshaling yards. Each of these environments has distinct requirements and an array of confounding support-related issues that put immense strain on their IT Communications and Field Services teams.
In the following customer success story, we examine these challenges in detail and show how 7SIGNAL’s Wi-Fi optimization tools helped address them. With that, let’s get started!
A Large, Complex Environment
Like many steel companies, this one has a large, complex campus, consisting of a multitude of unique environments. Spanning an area of roughly 1,280 acres, their facilities include: indoor and outdoor environments, carpeted office space, conference areas, retail space, cafeterias, coffee shops, heavy industrial areas, heavy equipment repair shops, a fire station, a medical facility, a security station, a gas station, a railway office, truck and railway car scales, a shipyard, boat slips, indoor athletic facilities (gyms, ice rinks, etc.), outdoor athletic fields (baseball diamonds, soccer fields, beach volleyball courts, tennis courts, driving range, etc.), and more.
To keep these sites connected, and to power the specific connectivity requirements of the company’s various business units, they built a massive 840-access point (AP) environment that’s centralized on-premises, cloud-based, distributed, and fully autonomous. Cisco devices, like AireOS, Meraki, and Catalyst APs, as well as autonomous workgroup bridge (WGB) clients, make up the backbone of their network. In addition, they leverage autonomous Siemens iWLAN Scalance devices that use a mix of standard and deterministic techniques for process control and safety.
All told, these APs have been configured to broadcast approximately 20 different SSIDs, used variously for campus-wide connectivity, specific business units, processes that rely on deterministic timing, laptops and mobile devices that conduct non-production functions, BYOD connections, and guest connections. The number of SSIDs broadcasted within particular areas ranges from one to four and they are managed by AP groups, RF profiles, SSID availability, and tags.
Support Challenges Impacted Both IT and End Users
Moreover, aside from the sheer size and complexity of their network, the company faced additional support challenges related to managing technology lifecycles and operating an evergreen Wi-Fi environment.
For example, not only does the company’s IT team have limited access to hardware once it’s installed out in production, they also struggle with both harsh environmental conditions and the challenges that attend old facilities built before the advent of contemporary connectivity solutions and strategies.
Resource-related challenges abound as well. Budget constraints and limited Wi-Fi spectrum availability put a great deal of pressure on the company’s IT team, forcing them to make difficult decisions regarding how they prioritize systems and mediate between business units that compete with one another for scarce resources.
“Whenever production is stopped, we are losing money.”
Now, it goes without saying that these connectivity-related challenges impact the company’s overall production. The question is, how much? To quantify the impact of an unreliable Wi-Fi network, and thus the return on investment for a reliable one, they looked at some hypotheticals.
Measuring the ROI of a Reliable Wi-Fi Network
First, they took the average weight of hot-rolled steel coils (22.3 tons), multiplied it by the commodity price at any given time, and then multiplied the result by the average output of their facilities (37 coils per hour). Based on these factors, and using a commodity price of $1,115 USD per ton (from December 7th, 2023), they estimated that they produced $920,000-worth of hot-rolled coil steel per hour. Subtracting the hot mill operating costs of $350,000 per hour, that comes out to $570,000 per hour or $9,500 per minute. In other words, if poor Wi-Fi connectivity contributes to just one minute of lost productivity, they lose $9,500.
Of course, this assumes stability in commodity pricing. The cost per ton for hot-rolled coil steel fluctuates based on market conditions. While the cost per ton was $1,115 USD on December 7th, it was $1,307 USD on March 9th. In other words, while one minute of production interruptions amounted to a loss of $9,500 USD on December 7th, it amounted to $12,140 USD on March 9th.
To make things even more concrete, they looked at a common Wi-Fi-related production impediment — radio frequency interference (RFI). RFI happens when unwanted signals detrimentally impact the radio communication systems used for Wi-Fi connectivity. In the hypothetical equation, they estimated that if RFI was causing intermittent drops, losses, or latency issues that resulted in a 10 second offset per coil, production would drop from 37 coils per hour to 33.5 coils per hour. This translates to a production loss of 3.5 coils (or 78.05 tons) per hour. Using the December 7th commodity price ($1,115 USD), this works out to a loss of $87,025 per hour or $1,450 per minute.