Material and Product lifecycle management
Material and Product lifecycle management: governance, automation and AI at the world's largest steelmaker
- Domains
- Material
- Applied product
- MDM + BRO
- Segment
- Industry
The world's largest steel producer, the ArcelorMittal Group has around 127,000 employees — 20,000 in Brazil — and serves customers in 140 countries, with the purpose of creating smarter steels for people and the planet. It was the first company in the Americas with a unit certified by ResponsibleSteel, one of the most respected ESG certifications in the world.
The Brazilian plants serve the automotive, home appliance, construction, oil & gas, machinery and equipment industries, among others. The company also operates in areas such as power generation for its own consumption, renewable bio-reducer production and information technology.
In 2015, driven by information quality needs and process improvement, ArcelorMittal Brasil identified that improving its material and product master data could deliver major benefits to the company:
• Raise information accuracy for decision making;
• Streamline master data, avoiding duplicates;
• Materialize tacit knowledge;
• Enable better process traceability, greater governance and agility;
• Reduce rework with validations between process steps (avoid passing errors forward);
• Increase efficiency in Procurement and Logistics processes;
• Minimize negative impacts on services provided to internal and external customers;
• Reduce inventory levels;
• And finally, mitigate fiscal and tax risks.
Project kick-off — The work started with the unification of the PDMs (description standards) of the different plants, reducing the number of existing PDMs by 82%. Master data cleansing reduced the number of items by 71%, reaching a total of 287,000 standardized materials.
After the success of this first stage, ArcelorMittal moved on to selecting the solution that would ensure the governance of its master data processes and perpetuate the standardization work done in the 1st wave. The entire acquisition process was based on technical and business requirements identified by the team involved, with constant support from IT and involving the largest Master Data Management players in the market.
After the rigorous selection process of the tool and implementation partner, akquinet Brasil was selected to support this important project, together with the MDM+ BRO solution. Specialized knowledge in master data processes and SAP technologies, in addition to a solution fully integrated with SAP ERP, led ArcelorMittal to choose akquinet Brasil.
The 2nd Wave – Process Governance and Simplification
The 2nd wave started with the design of the Material and Product registration processes (TO-BE) and the mapping of business rules. These definitions were based on the processes existing until then, the consultants' know-how and market best practices. The full potential that the MDM+ BRO solution could add to the future process (simplifications, automations, validations, etc.) was also considered. The new processes made registration simpler: previously all requests were made by e-mail or phone and, with the solution, all process flows started being orchestrated through the MDM+ BRO Workflow. The solution's reports and indicator dashboards provided greater visibility and enabled complete management of registration requests, thus ensuring governance. Implementing processes based on market best practices and on a standardized solution integrated with SAP ERP delivered performance and quality gains in ArcelorMittal Brasil's Material and Product master data.
The 3rd Wave – Transforming the Material Registration Process through Automation via Business Rules and AI
Updated data (2024) on the material registration process: 100% automation in some registration processes; SLA compliance at 99.34%; average service time of 6.15 hours, never rolling over to the next day; emergency requests at 23.27%; daily volume of 213 requests; +18 automations impacting productivity and compliance.
The 4th Wave – Customer Master Data Automation Project
Updated data (2026). The areas involved at AMB were treasury, commercial, AMS and tax.
- 3rd wave: automatic extension of material codes across plants
- 3rd wave: automatic creation and extension of NCM codes for all plants
- 3rd wave: self-service transaction so lead buyers can request the modification of the material group in material codes automatically
- 3rd wave: automatic creation of repair codes
- 3rd wave: lock for requests to modify basic data of items with technical pending issues
- 3rd wave: MDM+ BRO customization in the Lead Buyer validation step
- 3rd wave: update of PDM x material group rules in BRO
- 4th wave: replacement of manual activities and decentralized analyses by an automated validation flow
- 4th wave: integration with different corporate systems
- 4th wave: processing of more than 30,000 requests
- 4th wave: 92% automation gain in the process
- 4th wave: service time reduced from up to 48 hours to approx. 2 min
- 4th wave: higher quality and standardization of master data
- 4th wave: creation of a foundation for future governance and data cleansing initiatives across the company
“Imagine finding a tool that fits, like a puzzle piece, into the scope already existing in SAP, being SAP, and solving those recurring user complaints: I can't create new fields; I have no approval workflow; It's hard to use; I have to go through screens just to add 1 field; I have no visibility of where my request is. That was our story with BRO and akquinet Brasil. Our process is more robust, in a way that is easy to maintain and with sustainable gains. A very satisfying delivery, at the agreed cost and with great kindness and collaboration. Thank you, akquinet team.”
“Using BRO together with the workflow in product registration takes this process to a new level, considering the robustness that comes from better governance and process automation with the registered business rules and the standardization of product descriptions. Our expectation is to have a more solid process and leaner product master data in the near future.”
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