Majestic Steel Goes Digital To Streamline Its Supply Chain

Everybody, it seems, has a ready answer to fix America’s supply chain bottlenecks. Increased hours at our west coast ports, or purchasing more containers and more chassis, or fining companies that don’t pick up their goods on a timely basis.

For Majestic Steel, the answers lie in digital technology.

You may be thinking that the steel business isn’t a place you’d go looking for great examples of how the digital revolution is remaking our world. And in some respects, you’d be right. “Data’s a currency today in any business,” said Todd Leebow, President and CEO of Majestic Steel, a major domestic distributor and processor of flat-rolled steel. “The regular consumer can track a package six times right to the doorstep and see a picture of it there. In steel, it’s still mostly phone calls and emails to find your order. Data’s fragmented in steel today, and that’s a huge opportunity to streamline the supply chain.”

The folks at Majestic should know. The company was founded in 1979 by Todd’s dad Dennis, whose original gamble was stocking galvanized steel for the HVAC market. Still family-owned, today the company routinely carries over 200 million pounds of steel in various types, gauges and coatings, and also offers custom processing solutions such as cutting and embossing. Headquartered in Cleveland, Majestic now has 16 locations throughout the country.

A primary focus for Majestic today is creating digital innovations to better support customers. “We’re basically building a technology company within our legacy business,” said Leebow. “We’re developing apps to provide tech solutions just as much as we provide steel–things like inventory management and auto-replenishment.”

A big driver for those efforts came from Majestic foreseeing the current supply chain catastrophes. “On the supply chain backups, the warning signs have been flashing for years,” said Dave Kipe, Majestic’s COO. “People went to Just-In-Time with no backup if things went wrong. Now companies have to take a step back and figure out how they’re going to navigate this. For us, it’s about footprint. We had to get close to our customers. Domestic steel capacity is up, but it’s not keeping up. We had to get our customers the steel they needed. That meant having the right inventory positions, and for that data was needed. We came up with an inventory control system we built in-house. We take on the process of inventory control for our customers, so they don’t have to carry as much inventory.”

That led to the Majestic Inventory Control System (MICS), which gives real-time visibility into floor stock levels, and is available to all Majestic customers. The system includes a mobile user interface app that incorporates barcode scanning and AI tools for auto-restocking, so that inventories are updated immediately and continuously.

“We sit in the center of the supply chain, in production and distribution,” Leebow said. “We can affect a lot of things like product management and movement, and inventory management. There are a lot of improvements to be made there with data-driven decisions. We solve for things between our suppliers and our customers.”

From their start with inventory management, Majestic has continued to build its technology solutions. “We have a whole suite of in-house technology,” Kipe said. “Market data is another area, where we have current prices for things like zinc and scrap metal, and U.S. steel plant data. We put valuable information at our customers’ fingertips, all through tools on our website. We took what we learned from Amazon and ecommerce and brought it into the industrial world.”

Majestic also offers all customers its MHUB customer portal, a centralized online order management system that includes status of current orders, purchasing history, invoicing information, and tools such as its steel calculator, Unravel, and an online library of certifications.

The technology development has been driven entirely by customer needs. “We don’t want to patronize,” said Kipe. “We help our customers look at their own needs and their customers’ needs. If it helps our customers with their businesses, that helps us too. But if the data won’t help improve processes, then we don’t need it.”

“We’ve seen major investments in many sectors with technology,” said Leebow. “Steel and heavy industries have been somewhat overlooked. There are still untapped opportunities in those businesses. It’s an awareness play. A lot of tech companies are also traditional companies–Amazon, for example, which is a distribution and logistics company. They use tech on the front end to achieve success. We’re the inverse–we build tech where it doesn’t exist yet, and we have to make a conscious decision to do that and invest.”

“We take our position very seriously,” said Kipe. “The steel industry impacts so much–it’s everywhere. We looked at our needs and at our customers’ needs, then invested in inventory and in technology. We have an obligation to our customers and the U.S. steel producers to alleviate the steel supply chain bottlenecks. If we can take that worry away, then they can focus on other priorities.”

“We’ve been in business for 42 years now,” Leebow said. “We’re taking a fresh look at how we do our business.”