Tata Steel (London, UK):

Fischer H., CEO of European Operations, e-mail: redaktion@stahleisen.de

The traditional view is that the steel industry has not been as customer-focused as other sectors, preferring to concentrate on products and costs. Yet, in order to respond to the numerous challenges the European steel industry faces, it must reinvent itself and find a new path to success: by becoming truly customer-centric and delivering the competitiveadvantage customers need. In this regard, digitizing supply chains is one promising approach. This off ers major benefi ts for steel-buying manufacturers as well as for steel producers. But what may appear simple at first glance comes with great challenges for foundation industries such as steel. The steel industry wanted to implement digitization at the turn of the century already, but the solutions were not then available. Finally, technology has caught up with the ambition: these days, even our pocketsized smartphones are more powerful than supercomputers 20 years ago.