Tube City Acquires Software Company

Tube City LLC, Glassport, Pa., has acquired Scrap OptiMiser Associates, developer of the Scrap OptiMiser ferrous scrap computer-purchasing model.

Tube City chairman and CEO I. Michael Coslov says the OptiMiser purchase closes the loop in Tube City’s scrap management program for steel mills and foundries. Tube City has licensed the OptiMiser computer model for the past nine years.

Under terms of the agreement, Scrap OptiMiser owners Bob W. Martin and Roy Whipp will be affiliated with Tube City. Martin and Whipp, who market the Scrap OptiMiser out of the Chicago area, developed and introduced the software in 1995.

Steel mills use the model to determine what grades of scrap to buy to make scrap charge menus for their steelmaking furnaces.

Tube City has been licensing OptiMiser, an off-line program, to use on the front-end of its on-line, real-time model, GenBlend+, which it has developed over the past five years for use in basic oxygen steelmaking furnaces.

Chuck Johnsen, director of software engineering for Tube City, says his team, working with Martin and Whipp, can now integrate the two programs into one that will ultimately provide an integrated scrap management program for electric arc furnace (EAF) operators. Johnsen expects the new EAF model to be ready by the end of this year.

The OptiMiser/GenBlend+ combination will integrate the purchase of scrap based on the availability and price of various grades, and with that information can create scrap-charging menus to determine real-time scrap charges to produce the lowest cost liquid steel in EAFs.

“Tube City has been our best customer and we’ve worked with them for years,” says Martin. “With their ownership of the OptiMiser, we’re going to go beyond what Roy and I have done. Now, with their depth of support, we’ll take the program to level two, creating an integrated real-time model,” he adds.

Joseph Curtin, president and COO of Tube City, says he has been approached by a number of EAF mills that are interested in a scrap management program that will produce the lowest-cost liquid steel. “When we put the EAF Scrap OptiMiser program together with our GenBlend+ we’ll have just what they need. It’s going to revolutionize EAF steelmaking.”