Technology-based assistance system for production planning in stainless mills (TECPLAN) : final report

Production planning systems are essential for minimizing costs and maximizing productivity in steel processing plants. This project aimed at introducing and developing a new assistance system that determines the optimal production route for stainless steel, depending on the value of an applicability index as function of the desired strip quality, mill capabilities and customer requirements. This has been based on installation and measurement of strip flatness at different locations in the processing chain, development of prediction (transfer) models for flatness, crossbow, thickness tolerance, other quality parameters and plant throughput and development of new optimisation algorithms for the different processing routes (hot strip mill, cold rolling mills, annealing lines, temper mills and finishing line).