� COVER STORY � backbone of heavy industrial transportation. Rail freight remains essential for steel transport, and new technologies are unlocking even greater efficiencies. Real-time tracking through IoT sensors eliminates blind spots and provides live updates on the location, condition, and estimated arrival time of wagons. regulations make digital tools essential for tracking, reporting, and ensuring profitable operations. Automated documentation not only improves transparency but also ensures that logistics teams meet evolving regulatory requirements while reducing administrative burdens.
forecasting are redefining rail transportation, making it more agile, resilient, and sustainable. Those who embrace these advances will shape a future where performance and responsibility go hand in hand, ensuring ever more efficient and environmentally friendly steel transportation.
Automation also plays a critical role. Digitizing all rail transport documents, including consignment notes and wagon damage reports, makes operations smoother, ensures compliance with legal requirements, and improves maintenance tracking. Digital consignment notes replace manual paperwork, speeding up customs processes and minimizing errors.
For example, Saarstahl Rail logistics team is preparing to deploy IoT-based and AIdriven transport and wagon management to enhance rail distribution to construction sites. These advancements will enable logistics teams to gain realtime insights, optimize wagon utilization, and improve fleet efficiency, while also reducing Scope 3 emissions.
Regulatory compliance is also a key driver of digitalization in rail logistics. As governments push for greener and more efficient transportation, new
The future of steel logistics lies in combining human expertise with digitalization. Teams no longer just manage flows: they anticipate them, optimize routes, and reduce CO2 emissions.
But digitalization is not just about the tools and the day-to-day work of teams. It is also about building a lasting legacy of knowledge for the industry and within companies. By capturing operational expertise and industry knowledge and integrating it into structured processes and collaborative systems, companies can preserve expertise and make it accessible to future
generations of colleagues. This also makes the steel industry more attractive to young talent, who are drawn to workplaces where modern technology drives efficiency and innovation.
Real-time collaboration, automation, and intelligent
Sources
1 https:// corporate. arcelormittal. com / media / cases-studies / building-abusiness-that-capitalises-on-digitalopportunities
2 https:// eoxs. com / new _ blog / case-studies-successful-digitaltransformation-in-the-steel-industry /
About the author
Pélagie Mepin-Koebel is a graduate of TU Berlin and has been working in the German logistics and software industry for more than twenty years. During this time, she has gained a lot of experience with different focus areas such as automotive, steel, software, retail, fashion, beauty, consumer electronics, DIY, food and chemicals. She has helped SMEs to build, expand and transform their corporate and employer brand.
Green Steel World | Issue 17 | April 2025 9