Automating mill test reporting is a tough task because the reports contain a large amount of data on a raw material’s chemical and physical properties.
Material test report processing is performed by trained professionals and is a very time-consuming but necessary process. But luckily, there's a far better way that can provide significant cost and time savings for fabricators and material customers.
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MTRs can go by many other names, such as:
Basically, MTRs show proof of a metal product's origins, traceability and provide certainty to the end user about the metal quality and processes involved to create it.
Mill test reports typically include information such as:
Here’s a sample MTR for a steel plate from the Paul Mueller Company, a stainless steel manufacturer:
As you can see, there are a lot of fields of data, like:
The crucial thing to note is that once a raw product is shipped to a manufacturer, it is then their responsibility to track and maintain an awareness of the information on the test report.
For example, in the steel industry this is done through a heat code, or heat number stamped or written on the metal itself.
ASME certification require that mill test reports must be kept on file for up to three years after a product has been used to create something. It’s obvious that this critical data be kept in a database for tracking and reporting.
This is why automating the processing of mill test data is a huge time-saver for companies who use and process a large number of raw products from many different vendors.
To make the point about why automation has been so difficult, perform a Google search for mill test report examples and you’ll see that there’s no standardization for how the reports are structured.
Some MTRs are emailed in PDF format as part of the shipment notification for ordered products. However, in many cases only physical copies are available, so they must obviously be scanned.
This means digitally removing all the lines and non-text objects. Humans need this kind of document structure to gain an understanding of the data. But for software to “read” the MTR, these lines and objects only get in the way.
And if the MTR has been faxed and dragged around a dirty shop floor, and then scanned – it’s going to need some digital cleanup!
Even if 100% accuracy isn’t obtained, this will be corrected in later steps.
This training may sound daunting, but it's pretty simple. Training is as simple as putting a test batch of MTRs into the system and telling it which pages are the material test report.
Training will require a few examples, but not hundreds or thousands. Once the system learns what an MTR is, you can test it on a much larger set of documents to verify it is correctly classifying the documents.
Remember I mentioned earlier that there may be some characters not read with 100% accuracy by the OCR engines? Here’s where the system is programmed to flag any word or number it isn’t 100% sure about.
In a data review screen, the test report will be displayed in a visual format so that what the system “read” can be compared with the actual document.
By “looking up” this information in your database and comparing it to what was found by the automated processing software, you add an additional layer of quality assurance. So, if your purchase order was for a particular material grade but the MTR lists something different, this will also be flagged for human review.
It's only made possible by a new intelligent document processing platform called Grooper.
Here is the data that is universal to almost every mill test certificate:
Next to the customer details section, you will find information on the quantity of materials, dimensions like width and thickness, and much more.
This section also documents which governing specification standards (ASTM, AMS, ANSI, etc.) apply to this material.
The heat number is a code for that specific metal product. It can be used to identify that exact product and help consumers, manufacturers or mills learn about it's origin.
This number can be traced back to the mill or origin, the specific metal forging session that the batch of metal was created in, and the chemicals in the product. This number is also stamped on the metal before it is shipped out from the mill of origin.
This data describes the metal product's mechanical properties, like strength, hardness, elasticity and ductility. This information is vitally important how the product will be used. The customer can use this information to learn or ensure that the metal will stand up it's intended application.
This information will only be included on a mill test report if a temperature treatment was applied to the metal product. These treatments change the physical or chemical properties of metal material.
Treatments can include applying extreme heat or cold to material like normalizing, tempering, or hardening.
The mill test document will also detail the grade of the metal that was produced.
The chemical analysis data describes the metal alloys included in the metal. Depending on the alloys included in the product, the metal is required to fall within specific ranges to comply with specification standards.
Common alloys included in this section are amounts of copper, nickel, aluminum, chromium and carbon.
Interested in learning how to automate review processes for mill test reports? Contact us to learn about automating your MTR processing!
An MTR is another way to refer to a Mill Test Report. MTRs are certificates that verify that the chemical make up of raw materials such as steel and metal alloys were properly analyzed.
These reports are created by the raw material's manufacturer and MTRs follow the metal along the supply chain until it's final destination. MTRs help inform the end user that the metal can stand up to necessary requirements for every day use.