Automatic Control for the Utilization of Energy and Materials Drive and Process Control in the Steel Industry

Abstract

There is change in the steel industry. Recession has left its mark. Marginal facilities have been shut down and scrapped. Employment has been significantly reduced.Some remaining facilities equipped with computer automated material handling and process control are relatively modern. Other facilities are likely to have sound machinery and drives.Prosperity will return to the world and to steel. Steel is basic to economic development. More production will be needed and will be supplied, but it won't be supplied profitably using methods, nor plants of the 70s.Neither robotics, nor new large scale plants will be solutions. Re-industrialization, the redesign of entire plants and entire procelses as integrated Material flow systems will prove the cost effective approach.Distributed Computer Control Systems (DCCS) technology is ideally suited to modernize, upgrade, and improve the productivity of existing steel plant processes. First, the processes themselves are distributed geographically. For example, a hot strip mill may extend over one kilometer. Second, functional distribution is already practiced and proven. Digital computers, microprocessors, data highways, and improved man-machine interfaces have been installed, and are in operation on mills and processes installed before solid state electronics technology.The forecast for the future for drive and process control in the steel industry: more computers, more microprocessors, and more, more, and more. In simple language, the future is to automate, emigrate, or evaporate.