World experience of steel smart productions development: features, trends, consequences

The paper deals with the study of key features, main directions and basic consequences of steel smart productions’ development in countries-leading metal producers. Its relevance is explained by the rapid advancements in emerging technologies in the world, which leads to the need for strategic transformation in the steel industry with an emphasis on the use of smart solutions and technologies.The paper revealed that the historical prerequisites for steel industry’s smartization are that it has developed successfully throughout all industrial revolutions, and the metal is still and will remain one of the main structural materials. This process’ relevance is associated with an efficiency increase of metal enterprises and the urge to meet modern requirements of counterparties. The latter is seen in the progressive development of the industry, as there is a danger of staying away from a number of advanced economic processes. The main goal of steel smart productions development is to increase the adaptability of the industry to dynamic changes in the external environment.It was determined that the core of smart steel industry development is its digitalization through smart solutions and technologies, such as the Internet of Things, smart devices, robots, artificial intelligence, big data, additive technologies, predictive analytics and so on. However, since the emerging technologies are developing and improving with high speed, the main task is to identify the basic points of application and directions of introduction of these technologies.Based on the study of features of smart technologies’ implementation in the production, organizational, economic and social areas of steel enterprises, it was revealed in the paper that their fastest implementation occurs in the organizational and economic spheres, where the main direction is increasing the customization of the business model, the slowest one - in the production area, where the emphasis is on improving the efficiency of steel enterprises. The social sphere is distinguished by an average level of the rate of smartization and focuses on improving working conditions and safety and changing labor requirements.It is determined that the main positive consequence of the smartization of steel industry is an increase of resource efficiency and environmental friendliness; the negative consequences are a significant increase in cyber threats and employees’ release in the short term. It seems more ambiguous the role of human in the production processes, which can lead to both: a reduction in errors, caused by the human factor, and a trigger of insufficient flexibility in response to force majeure situations.