TRW Brings e-Technology to the Steel Industry

    PITTSBURGH--June 12, 2001--In the 1920s, when TRW Inc. was named Steel Products Company, the company helped revolutionize the performance of airplanes and automobiles with its silcrome and sodium-cooled valve technologies.
    In 2001, with the launch of SteelPartner.com, TRW is applying its advanced technologies to help improve performance and operating efficiency in the steel industry.
    SteelPartner.com is a Web-based service steel producers and processors will use to better manage supply-chain transactions, transportation and inventories. TRW developed the industry-wide e-commerce system with the American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI).
    With the pilot successfully completed, TRW is rolling out SteelPartner.com to some 150 steel processors, linking them to steel producers and other companies that perform various steel processes. Within three years, TRW expects more than 500 outside processors to use SteelPartner.com and related services, which it sells as annual subscriptions.
    SteelPartner.com supports electronic data interchange (EDI) transactions from 11 major steel producers in the X12 EDI format. TRW said it will also be offering numerous add-on applications and services (including interface, EDI translation, system development and consulting) to complement SteelPartner.com service.
    "As steel producers implement advanced communications and EDI systems, the companies that service the steel producers are finding it more and more difficult, and costly, to meet their requirements," said Al Dodson, northeast regional manager of managed network services for TRW Systems. "SteelPartner.com handles these requirements, by design, in the background. It's a secure, tested, AISI-reviewed system, which provides a cost-effective, low-risk solution as opposed to the more risky options now used in the industry."
    SteelPartner.com is managed from TRW's Pittsburgh office.
    In a related industry effort, Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel Corp. selected TRW in 1999 to modernize information technology and telecommunications systems for its Wheeling, W. Va., headquarters and 21 steel and manufacturing plants across the nation.