A plain comparison of paper log sheets, Excel consolidation, and a digital logsheet system — across the things that matter on a steel melt shop floor.
| Paper log sheet | Paper + Excel | Digital logsheet (SmeltSync) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Data entry | Handwritten by melter each shift | Handwritten, then re-typed into Excel | Entered once, on screen, by the melter |
| Consolidation | Manual, at month-end | Manual, at shift or month-end | Automatic, continuous |
| Heat traceability | Requires cross-referencing three registers | Depends on consistent manual linking | Automatic, by heat number |
| Error risk | Illegible handwriting, transposed digits | Re-typing errors, broken formulas | Validated on entry |
| Visibility | None until consolidated | Delayed, batch-based | Live dashboard |
| Audit trail | Paper archive only | Spreadsheet version history, if kept | Timestamped, admin-verified entries |
| Setup effort | None — already in use | Template built once, maintained manually | Configured to your grades and shifts in days |
Paper is fast to write on, needs no training, and never has downtime. For a single furnace with no downstream traceability requirement, it can be enough.
Excel doesn't fix the paper problem — it adds a re-typing step on top of it. A single misread tap weight or a formula that breaks when a row is inserted can silently distort a whole month's cost and yield figures, and there's no way to catch it without going back to the original paper.
The entry step stays the same — a melter fills in a screen shaped like their old register — but the record is structured from the start: timestamped, validated, and linked to the heat number that AOD and CCM will use for the same heat. Consolidation stops being a separate task because there's nothing left to consolidate; the report already exists.
Chandan Steel Ltd's SMS Division went from roughly three-plus hours of manual consolidation per shift to about ten minutes of digital entry per heat after adopting a connected Furnace–AOD–CCM logsheet system. See the full case study.
30 days, free, alongside your existing paper process.