Outokumpu digital innovation hub drives AI solutions in sustainable stainless steel

Outokumpu is the world’s leading producer of sustainable stainless steel, operating in almost 30 countries. Outokumpu is actively leveraging AI and machine learning technologies to enhance operational excellence and further strengthen its market position. Solita helped Outokumpu establish the digital innovation hub, a systematic approach to fostering and accelerating AI-based innovation and aligning initiatives with their overall strategy.

A systematic way to foster innovation

Creating digital innovations and getting new ideas throughout the organisation is crucial, as is the ability to quickly validate and test them to prove value. Earlier, development projects were started with inconsistent designs and execution. Projects were hard to test and manage systematically. The lack of a systematic review process made it difficult to find the most promising ideas.

Outokumpu approached Solita to create a more systematic way to develop AI innovations and solutions. Moreover, Solita built a technical ML platform for Outokumpu. Solita’s track record of completing projects of similar nature, scope, and complexity made it the obvious choice as a partner. 

MLOps significantly streamlines development

“We had to get organised around enhancing our capabilities in AI and machine learning”, explained Kristiina Tiilas, Head of Digital Platform at Outokumpu. “To begin with, we needed to set up our machine learning operations (MLOps) tools, practices, and principles.”

Solita also created an MLOps framework, which is a playbook with best practices for using the MLOps platform. The new common platform and standardised methods will make it easier to start and run projects throughout their lifecycle.

MLOps processes improve overall productivity and shorten time-to-market. They also improve the lifecycle management of machine learning models and will enable better collaboration between data scientists and operations engineers. As a result, Outokumpu’s customers can expect better customer experience, product quality, more competitive pricing, and timeliness.

A digital innovation hub to drive digital transformation

The development of the MLOps platform and framework cleared the way for the project’s next and most important phase: establishing the digital innovation hub, a formalised, scalable, and systematic bottom-up business process.

The digital innovation hub will allow Outokumpu to tap into the collective intelligence of the organisation and turn its ideas into prototypes and digital products. It promises to streamline and speed up future advances in digital innovation. The long-term goal of setting up the digital innovation hub is to create and apply AI and machine learning to improve processes, save costs, and generate new revenue.

While we built the digital innovation hub, Tiilas assembled an idea-hunting team to discover the most promising ideas within the organisation.

“We designed the new innovation process to deliver evidence about AI adoption and business value already from very early phases. This required Outokumpu to establish new practices both at the innovation team level and in steering the innovation work. Involved personnel from different levels at Outokumpu were really open to learning new things. To me, this highlighted what a forward-leaning company Outokumpu is”, says Mikko Väätäinen, Business Design Lead at Solita.