“Any mill that is not using these techniques in a few years is going to be behind. This is going to be a new competitive benchmark. You see this emerging now. The companies that are using this are outperforming other companies,” Pratt said, speaking during a discussion about steel industry digitalization at the annual Steel Success Strategies conference in New York City.

The 33rd installment of the conference opened Monday.

Pratt’s company provides supercomputing and machine learning services to a number of businesses, most notably to Arkansas-based Big River Steel. 

“It’s a very exciting time. There’s tremendous opportunities and upside in metals manufacturing,” Pratt said.

Big River incorporates Noodle.ai’s artificial intelligence throughout its operations. The technology is called upon to handle a number of functions at Big River, such as scheduling optimization, predictive maintenance and demand prediction.

Although Noodle.ai works with businesses in other sectors, Pratt said the company is particularly excited about steel. 

“We’re in steel because there’s lots of data. The conditions are right in steel because of the sensorization and the data availability,” Pratt said.