Manufacturing execution for metals

The plant floor, scheduled and under control.

KNet Technologies builds and implements manufacturing execution, scheduling and planning software for steel, aluminium and copper producers — backed by nearly three decades on real mill floors, not just in architecture diagrams.

28yrs
Steel & MES
domain experience
19
Functional modules
in DigiPlantMES
3
Metal families
steel · aluminium · copper
Schematic of a connected metals plant: EAF and ladle, continuous caster, reheat furnace, hot strip mill stands and coiler, with live data flowing up into a mill schedule and OEE dashboard.
Built for Steel — long & flat Aluminium Copper & brass Special alloys Forging & foundry
What we do

Four ways we work with metals producers

From advisory through to running software in production — and the scarce domain people who know what a heat, a coil and a caster sequence actually mean.

IT Consultancy

Independent advice on MES, L2/L3 architecture, vendor selection and roadmaps — from people who have sat on both the plant and the supplier side.

  • MES / MOM strategy & assessment
  • Vendor and build-vs-buy evaluation
  • Integration & data architecture

Digital Transformation

Practical Industry 4.0 for metals: connect the line, get trustworthy data out of it, then automate the decisions that actually cost money.

  • OT/IT convergence & unified namespace
  • Shop-floor data capture & traceability
  • Analytics, OEE and digital twin pilots

Software Development

Custom industrial software built to survive a plant environment — Django, PostgreSQL, React and TypeScript, delivered as versioned, upgradable releases.

  • Bespoke MES & L3 applications
  • Legacy modernisation & migration
  • Interfaces, simulators and test harnesses

Expert Resources — Metals

Consultants who already speak the domain: PSI Metals, MES, L3 planning and scheduling specialists placed onto your programme without a 12-month learning curve.

  • PSI Metals functional & technical experts
  • MES business analysts & solution architects
  • Scheduling and planning specialists
Our product

DigiPlantMES — execution, built for metals

A modular, multi-tenant Manufacturing Execution System for mid-size metals plants. Everything the big platforms do at the execution layer, on a PostgreSQL stack with no Oracle licence attached — and priced so a mid-market mill can actually approve it.

  • Full material genealogy — heat to slab to coil to cut, in one traceable chain
  • 19 functional modules across order dressing, tracking, quality, yard and logistics
  • Configurable business rules instead of code changes for every plant practice
  • Open integration layer — OPC-UA, MQTT, Modbus, EtherNet/IP, Kafka, XML/JSON mapping
  • Deployed per customer as a versioned unit with a proper release train
Layered diagram showing DigiPlantMES as the Level 3 execution layer between ERP and planning above, and Level 2 process automation, PLCs and sensors below.
DigiPlantMES sits at Level 3 — between ERP and the line
Scheduling suite

A scheduler for every stage of the route

Metals scheduling is not generic APS. Each unit has its own physics, its own campaign rules and its own definition of a good sequence. We build them one by one.

01 · MELT SHOP

SMS Scheduler

Heat-level sequencing through EAF, ladle furnace, degasser and caster — grade groupings, ladle availability, crane and transport constraints.

02 · CASTING

Caster Scheduler

Sequence building by width, grade family and tundish life. Transition penalties, cast length optimisation, and slab-to-order matching.

03 · ROLLING

Mill Schedules

Hot strip and plate rolling programmes that respect the coffin curve, roll campaign wear, width step-downs and gauge transitions.

04 · FINISHING

Cold Mill · Gal · Paint

Colour campaigns on the paint line, coating-weight blocks on galvanising, and cold-mill programmes linked back to hot-band availability.

05 · FORGING

Forging Scheduler

Press and hammer loading with furnace soak times, die changeovers and heat-treatment batch grouping across the shop.

Not on the list?

Sinter, pickling, tube, extrusion, rod and wire — the modelling approach is the same. Tell us the unit and its rules.

Planning dashboard: demand forecast versus committed orders, a multi-plant capacity load heatmap, and a production plan timeline.
Demand · capacity · production plan, one horizon
Planning for metals

Plan across plants, not just across shifts

Most metals groups run several plants that quietly compete for the same order book. Our planning layer makes that allocation explicit — and re-plannable when a caster goes down on a Tuesday.

  • Demand planning — forecast, order intake and contract call-offs on one horizon
  • Multi-plant capacity planning — load, bottleneck and route-alternative comparison
  • Production planning — monthly and weekly plans that hand off cleanly to the schedulers
  • Scenario & what-if — outages, order surges, campaign changes, side by side
Why KNet

Domain first. Software second.

Plenty of firms can write software. Very few can tell you why your caster sequence keeps breaking at the width transition — and then write the software that fixes it.

28 years
In steel operations, MES and L3 programmes
Tier-1
Background across major integrated and mini-mill producers
PSI Metals
Hands-on functional and implementation expertise
EU-based
Amstelveen, Netherlands — working across EU, UK and India

We have run these plants

Our team has lived through commissioning weekends, L2 handshake failures and month-end reconciliation. That shows up in the design.

Mid-market economics

An open-source data stack and per-customer deployment model removes the licence layer that puts tier-1 platforms out of reach.

Phased, reversible rollouts

Start with one unit or one module. Prove it. Extend. No two-year big-bang programme with no exit.

Design Partner Program · open

Be one of our first three reference plants.

We are selecting a small number of design partners to shape DigiPlantMES against real operations. In exchange for your input and a reference commitment, you get terms no one will see again.

Up to 100% licence discount

For the first three customers, scaled to the reference commitment you make.

Five years of free upgrades

Every release on the train, at no additional licence cost.

Source code escrow

Continuity protection, so a mid-size supplier is never a single point of failure.