Gary Works, still one of the largest steel mills in the U.S., employs 4,000 people and has 7.5 million net tons of annual raw steel capability. Big River Steel recently installed a slushie machine to help employees cool off. But the algorithms deployed at Big River can’t plug and play in other mills, according to Christian Holliday, senior director of Digital Studio and Big River Steel Integration at U.S. Steel. Bandwidth is notoriously poor in environments like steel mills that are full of concrete and steel. The Big River acquisition hasn’t provided a one-size-fits-all template for modernization at U.S. Steel’s older plants.

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