AbstractLine pacing control in steel processing lines is known to be a difficult task for operators.?They usually take a conservative control policy in order to avoid shutdown, and the processing capacity of the line has not been fully utilized yet. This paper presents a new modeling and control technique for line pacing based on a hybrid petri net (HPN) and mixed logical dynamical system (MLDS) expressions. The proposed modeling method can harmoniously integrate continuous and discrete aspects of the system. Moreover, the proposed method can provide a suitable formulation for numerical optimization. Based on this hybrid system modeling, the closed‐loop control can be realized by the receding horizon scheme. Numerical examples demonstrate that the processing capacity can be fully utilized by the proposed method. © 2012 Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.