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Suppose you are, by many measures, the largest processor of hot rolled cut sheet in the USA. Suppose you’ve exhaustively studied SCS and concluded it offers compelling value for your customer base. Suppose you want to get into SCS production and start delivering that value ASAP. What do you do?

Well, if you’re Feralloy Corporation, you don’t waste a second. That’s why Feralloy recently acquired the Layhill Processing SCS Sheet line and moved it to their state-of-the-art sheeting facility just outside Charleston, South Carolina. The SCS line will begin producing in mid-April.
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“To get into SCS production with all new equipment, we were looking out 12 to 14 months before we brush the first sheet. Buying the Layhill operation gets us there in four months,” explains Roger Sippey, Feralloy Executive VP and 40 year veteran of the flat-rolled processing industry. “That fits our style; once we decide to go in a certain direction, we don’t second guess or putz around. We take action.”

There’s been lots of action at Feralloy in the past 10 months. Last May, Feralloy and its structural steel industry counterparts, Infra-Metals and Delta Steel, were acquired by Platinum Equity, one of the USA’s twenty largest privately-held companies. Just three weeks later, Platinum added Metals Supply Company to the group. In July,
      Mike Grimmer, General Manager of Feralloy Charleston Division shows
     off the "next-to-new" SCS Sheet Line that begins operation in mid-April.
     The line will process sheets up to 72" wide, 240" long and 0.500" thick.		       Acero Prime, Feralloy’s Mexico service
      center joint venture with US Steel and
      Mitsui Steel, announced a $2 million
      facility expansion. August 2006 saw
      Oregon Feralloy Partners, the joint
venture between Feralloy and Oregon Steel Mills, announce a $2.7 million equipment investment that will give it the ability to recoil heavy material (up to 0.750”) that's been run through its temper mill.

“That’s a lot to absorb in a short time,” comments Frank Walker, Feralloy’s President and CEO, “but it works because the leaders and their teams at the operating divisions make it work. My staff and I have the responsibility to make sure the divisions get the resources, talent and equipment they need. The divisions' job is to use those assets to take care of the customers.”

Among those customers are the largest producers of construction and agricultural equipment, metal buildings, storage tanks and tubing in the country. They're served by 600 Feralloy employees in six sales divisions and five joint ventures which, combined, operate 14 processing facilities in the US and Mexico. Feralloy offers slitting, sheeting, temper rolling and pickling on a nationwide basis, and while Feralloy’s Charleston Division will be home to the SCS Sheet line, SCS sheets will be offered to Feralloy’s customers everywhere.
Feralloy Charleston, which opened in 1999 on the Nucor Berkeley campus, was the natural location for the SCS Sheet line. “Being next door to Nucor, our inbound freight rates are very cost-effective,” observes Sippey, “and we're in the one area of the country where traditional manufacturing is really growing. But what's exciting is how well SCS complements our sheeting line in Charleston. That line features one of the beefiest, most advanced hydraulic roller levelers anywhere, and it turns out laser-flat sheets. Now they’ll be laser-flat SCS sheets.”

Mike Grimmer, General Manager of the ISO-9001:2000 certified Charleston Division, is equally excited about this new product. “There are so many fabricators in the region adding laser cutting and they are just coming to understand the productivity advantages SCS offers. Many will come directly to us for SCS. Many will come to their current steel distributor who will, in turn, come to us for SCS processing. Either way the customer wins because they will be getting a very consistent, very high quality product.”
Grimmer recognizes that customers can’t all be converted to SCS overnight. “Realistically, we won’t try to sell SCS to purchasing agents conditioned to buying on price. SCS needs to be sold on the shop floor – to the welding supervisor, the paint shop foreman – people who understand its performance advantages. That takes time, but we need to start now, because what we learn with SCS here we intend to spread throughout the Feralloy family.”

Does that portend more SCS production lines at other Feralloy facilities? “I expect so,” says Walker. “Even though we’re a 53 year old company, we think more like a startup. We reach out to form partnerships. We explore new technology that can give us a competitive advantage. So we had already done our homework on SCS. We understood the cost savings to the customer. We understood the potential ROI for Feralloy. Acquiring the Layhill SCS Sheet line was the opportunity to jump start going from plans to production.”

                 To get started with SCS, contact your Feralloy Sales Representative, or call (843) 336-4107
It's spring, and new SCS production capacity is in bloom. 2007 will see six new SCS production centers come on line (see the SCS Locations page for details), so not only will we profile new producers like Feralloy, we've also decided to devote an occasional column to items of interest from operating production centers.

This inaugural guest column is from Rich Merlo of JDM Steel Service of Chicago. The JDM Steel SCS Coil Line just entered operation in January and is now in full production. What follows is Merlo's account of how the SCS Coil Line's shape correction capability is solving problems.

"We have a real 'work horse' cut-to-
    Sheets cut from coil with bad edge wave: Rejected sheets (between the red
    arrows) were conventional roller-leveled only. Sheets between the yellow
    arrows were cut from a coil after shape-correction on the SCS Coil Line.		       length line with roller leveling that
      produces beautiful sheets. Most of
      the time. On occasion, we get a coil
      with a wave that just can't be knocked

      down completely. In that case the
customer often has us send the material out for temper passing, then bring it back and sheet it.  Well, one of the reasons we wanted the SCS Coil Line was it's ability to correct shape problems through a combination of roller and tension leveling. We recently got the chance to find out just what it can do.

A service center customer that we toll process for sent in some 12 gauge x 72" hot rolled CQ band that we were to level and sheet. The customer knew they had a shape problem, so they came in to see if we would be able to get it straightened out. Turns out it had about a 5 to 6" wave on both sides. We were able to knock that down to about 2", but we didn't even have to shear it to know it was not going to get to their flatness tolerance. We did shear a few sheets -- they are sitting on the top of the stack in the photo above, between the red arrows.

Well, the customer was going to send out all the coils for tempering and leveling, but Gene Puk (VP Operations for JDM) suggested that the SCS Coil Line might fix the problem. The customer gave us the OK to SCS one of the problem coils as a trial and a couple hours later we had it on the SCS line and ready to go. The customer's division manager drove over to watch.

This coil was just as nasty as the first one we had tried to run on our cut-to-length line, but between the leveler and the tension, it was knocked down nearly dead flat. The division manager was amazed and couldn't wait to get back and tell his people what the SCS line can do. The next day he came back to watch us run the coil on the cut-to-length line and the sheets came out great -- well within spec. Those sheets are the full bundles shown in the photo -- the nice, flat bundles between the yellow areas.

The customer is delighted and is sending us three more coils for SCS processing that he was otherwise going to send out for temper pass and leveling. That confirms one of the big reasons we got into the SCS business -- recovering coils with rust or shape problems can be an important value-added service for our customers."
   Copyright 2007 The Material Works, Ltd.