Mitsubishi Corporation's "Mill-Box" Releases Fabricator-Specific Functions to Achieve Mill Sheet DX

Mitsubishi Corporation's Materials Solution Group, Industrial Materials DX Department (hereinafter "Mitsubishi Corporation") has released new functions for fabricators for its mill sheet digitalization and management service "Mill-Box".

This enables not only centralized management of mill sheet data but also instantaneous creation of management documents such as summary tables and lists based on mill sheet information, contributing to operational efficiency and reduction of working hours in steel distribution.

## Background
### Significant burden of creating management documents for fabricators

For fabricators handling steel frames, tasks related to mill sheets (documents certifying the quality of steel materials) still pose a significant burden. In particular, the manual aggregation of large volumes of mill sheet information generated for each project and the creation of lists and summary tables in formats specified by each company require a great deal of time and effort. Manual transcription errors and the need for verification not only pose risks to quality control but also pressure the time that should be dedicated to core operations.

The conventional Mill-Box did not have functions specifically for creating summary tables and lists tailored to submission formats, thus failing to reduce the burden of document creation for steel fabricators.

With the increasing adoption of Mill-Box by general contractors and the progress in streamlining rebar mill sheet operations, there is growing expectation for steel fabricators to also adopt Mill-Box and facilitate smooth data linkage within projects. Against this backdrop, we have been developing new functions to automate and streamline the creation of "lists and summary tables."

## Feature Introduction
### Functions for Fabricators

The newly released functions for fabricators were developed to solve these challenges. Mill-Box not only centralizes mill sheet data but also allows for instantaneous creation of management documents such as summary tables and lists based on that information.

This is expected to significantly reduce the man-hours for management document creation, which traditionally required a lot of time for manual work, transcription, and verification, leading to the following benefits:
- Reduction in working hours by cutting down management document creation time
- Improvement in quality by suppressing manual input and transcription errors
- Shift to core operations by compressing ancillary tasks

## Features of Mill-Box

One of the features of Mill-Box, the "electronic mill sheet exchange function," contributes not only to internal efficiency but also to reducing the workload of business partners. By streamlining peripheral tasks such as receiving, confirming, storing, and searching mill sheets, it leads to reduced inter-company operations and promotes overall operational efficiency in the steel distribution industry.

Currently, Mill-Box has expanded its adoption to over 300 companies nationwide across a wide range of business types, including manufacturers, trading companies, special agents, processing companies, fabricators, and general contractors, and mill sheet management using metadata* is spreading. We will continue to promote the development of an environment that allows more companies to use it smoothly, contributing to the digitalization and operational efficiency of the entire industry.

What is metadata?
Structured electronic data accompanying mill sheets. Unlike OCR (Optical Character Recognition), it can accurately import information directly into the system without being affected by reading accuracy, eliminating the need for verification and dramatically improving data registration operations.

## Future Outlook

Mill-Box emphasizes DX rooted in practical on-site operations and provides development and operational support. We will continue to reflect on-site feedback into the product and contribute to improving the productivity of the entire industry by supporting the creation of a mill sheet management system that facilitates collaboration among stakeholders involved in steel distribution, such as construction companies, trading companies, manufacturers, and inspection agencies.

## About Mill-Box

Mill-Box is the industry's only platform that digitalizes the exchange of mill sheets (steel material quality certificates) across the entire steel distribution supply chain, from steel manufacturers to trading companies, special agents, processing companies, fabricators, and general contractors.

*Business model patent acquired: No. 7439334

It electronically manages mill sheets that have traditionally been exchanged in paper or PDF format, completing a series of tasks such as automatic disclosure to business partners, searching under various conditions, storage, and creation of various management documents on the cloud, dramatically improving the operational efficiency of the entire industry.

Another feature is its simple and intuitive operability, designed to match the actual operations of each company. By utilizing registration functions that leverage metadata and OCR, it significantly reduces conventional verification work and input errors that were premised on manual input.

By eliminating the "mill sheet bucket relay" in the supply chain, it promotes reduced workload for each company and paperless operations, contributing to the DX and productivity improvement of the entire steel distribution industry.

Official website: https://millbox.mc-imdx.com/

## Inquiries regarding this matter
Mitsubishi Corporation
Materials Solution Group, Industrial Materials DX Department
Email: yuki.uetani@mitsubishicorp.com
Phone: 080-5077-2221

## Inquiries from media and press organizations
Mitsubishi Corporation, Public Relations Department, Press Team
Phone: 03-3210-2171