INTELLIGENT STEEL MANUFACTURING

The finished product of modern, integrated iron and steel industry is the result of an important succession of complex processes. Each step of the manufacturing process has an impact on the characteristics of the final product (e.g. mechanical properties, surface appearance, roughness, resilience).

In order to respect the stringent customer’s requirements (car manufacturing, home-appliances, building materials, packaging), it is important to master the complex relationships between the various parameters of the manufacturing process and the characteristics of the finished product to be delivered. The globalization and the market pressure push the steel makers to optimize the efficiency of the manufacturing assets and the return on investments.

PEPITe provides « intelligent manufacturing » solutions to help the metal industry regarding these challenges. PEPITe has developed innovative tools to extract valuable knowledge from the large volume of data collected by the monitoring of the steel making process. Relationships can be extracted, through Data Mining, from the historical data of the process. These relationships links key characteristics of the product with process parameters, allowing to better control the quality of the final product as well as optimizing the process itself.

PEPITe is able to detect critical parameters and complex interrelationships that will help the steel maker to improve the plant efficiency. The ROI of these solutions is a matter of months. Based on its generic data mining tools, PEPITe provides solutions that targets specific challenges faced in the day-to-day operation of a steel manufacturing line:

• Smart Steel Mill Optimal Preset, increases the productivity of a steel mill by decreasing the off-spec products

• Accumulator Optimizer, optimize the speed control of the steel strip to maximize the productivity and accumulators efficiency

• Smart Coil Cooling Predictor, reduces the storing time by a better estimation of the cooling time so that the coil can be handled earlier

• Steam System Optimizer, optimize the combustion of blast furnaces and coke units to produce steam and electrical energy