Knowledge‐based system for estimating steel plant performance

It is vital that an enterprise establishes the relative performance of its processes within any market sector. As an enterprise measures and monitors the performance of its competitors’ processes vis‐à‐vis their own, the enterprise can be described as initiating a benchmarking study. This paper describes the knowledge acquisition methodology and the knowledge management methodology adopted for the development of a knowledge‐based system to estimate the cash cost performance of the product delivery process of steel plants. It will show how the combination of the two methodologies interacted to produce and implement a successful knowledge‐based system that estimated the cash cost performance of an electric arc furnace from incomplete and qualitative information.