Case Study: Gerdau Steel achieves $4.5M annual savings and 8-month ROI with GE Digital's predictive maintenance

Gerdau Increasing Productivity With Predictive Maintenance

Gerdau Steel, the largest producer of long steel in the Americas, faced margin pressure as production capacity grew faster than steel consumption and needed to reduce annual maintenance spend while improving predictive maintenance and asset productivity. To tackle this, Gerdau Steel partnered with GE Digital and adopted GE Digital’s Customer Success Services and Acceleration Plans, deploying SmartSignal (part of the Asset Performance Management suite) and Historian to drive software‑enabled asset monitoring.

GE Digital’s team—combining Adoption Services, Managed Services, and Support & Maintenance with a dedicated Customer Success Manager—implemented remote monitoring and proactive software support. The Managed Services team identified two major abnormalities on initial assets, avoiding more than 150 hours of unplanned downtime; Gerdau Steel expects roughly $4.5 million in annual savings and an estimated ROI in just eight months, with an initial investment under one‑third of the projected savings.

Gerdau Steel