SCOOP (Steel Cost Optimisation) is a strategic decision support tool aimed at selecting the best combination of raw materials that match all quality and technical requirements of an integrated operation.

It is a technical and economical model that takes all the chemical, thermodynamic, mechanical, productivity, availability and logistical formulas into account. Moreover, it allows optimization by department (coke plant, sinter plant, blast furnace or steel shop for an integrated steel company; electrical furnace or converter for an electrical production) or for the full range of departments, which is unique in the market.

Typically used by the process manager in an integrated steel works company or electrical furnace, it is a simulation tool that can re-calculate the best response to any change in the process, availability or price of the raw material in merely a few seconds. It computes the impact of the introduction of a new raw material, and determines its optimal quantity and price. SCOOP is also a tool for raw material procurement personnel. It allows them to negotiate prices based on the Limit Marginal Price calculation of SCOOP. This price indicates when a given raw material becomes attractive in terms of quality and price and how the system would react to any price variation.

By its nature, SCOOP is the perfect tool to facilitate the dialogue between the process personnel (who need raw materials that allow them to achieve the quality of steel they need to produce) and the procurement personnel (who endeavour to obtain those materials at the best price). The documentation features of SCOOP will also be of interest to the process experts and R&D. All formulas taken either from literature or from site experience, sometimes accumulated over many years, are documented in SCOOP with hyperlinks in each field. You can easily view where and how a parameter is used in a formula and which other parameters influence this formula. Hyperlink documentation includes many kinds of documents and graphics. This is what we call knowledge aggregation.

SCOOP can also be used at a more operational level, especially for electrical furnaces (stainless or normal steel) where price and availability of scraps change very considerably. When multiple sites are connected, it will calculate the optimal usage of scraps for the different sites, based on the quality of steel they need to produce.

The benefits of SCOOP are easy to calculate (). They vary between 4 and 20 Euro per ton of steel produced, making it one of the quickest returns on investment solutions on the market (generally a few weeks). As it targets the raw material costs, which represent up to 85% of the total production costs of steel, it represents a strategic asset to any steel producer.

A typical implementation of SCOOP will commence with a blueprint. A blueprint is a detailed analysis of the requirements, equipments, tools and formulas already available. When this phase is complete, we have a precise idea of the benefits to be achieved and the time required to integrate the specific knowledge of a given company. Implementation starts when the SCOOP contains all standard formulas (thermodynamic, chemical…) for the production flow. As each steel company and even each site has particular, sometimes empirical formulas resulting from numerous years of experience, the implementation will add these to the tool.

SCOOP is a parameter-driven tool that can be easily reconfigured to comply with any change in production (a blast furnace refurbishing for instance) or market conditions.

There are several versions of SCOOP depending on the mode of production:

SCOOP for Integrated Steel works
SCOOP for Minimills
SCOOP for Stainless steel