Automation in Steel Industry

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Automation in Steel Industry

 Satyendra  December 29, 2016  0 Comments
 Automation, Computers, Controls, Digital Controller. Automation Levels, Distribted Controls,
Functional Hierarchy, Input/Output, Instruments, Programmable Controllers
Automation in Steel Industry
Steel is an alloy of iron usually containing less than 1 % carbon. Because

of its versatile properties and its recycling possibilities, steel is the basic
material for sustained development in modern industrial society. It
provides a broad range of uses in almost all important sectors of industry
such as apparatus and machinery manufacture, bridge and building
construction, power and environmental engineering, and automotive and
transportation industries.
Steel is and will remain the most important engineering and construction
material in the modern era. The steel industry is a very dynamic industrial
sector. Further steps are ongoing towards increasing resource and energy
e ciency, reducing emissions and providing safe and healthy work
environments. For achieving this, the steel industry is to excel in today’s
environment which is a highly dynamic and interactive business
environment. Market conditions, new product requirements, raw material
costs, and process management etc. all affects the performance of the
steel industry.
The steel industry is an important driving force of the economy and hence
it should be run e ciently. Further it needs heavy investments and hence it
is essential that it operates economically to keep it healthy. Its products
are indispensable for other industries such as automotive and
construction. Quality, reliability and economic e ciency in the production
of steel products can only be ensured by means of automated
manufacturing facilities.
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The processes of steel industry are highly energy intensive and comprised
of many complex unit operations. Iron ore and coal need preprocessing
before feeding into a reactor, and liquid metals from different reactors
need to be carefully handled. Further liquid steel is to be converted into
solid form and then rolled into nished products. Each of these operations
has a stake in the quality of steel produced, and also needs constant
monitoring. There are many systems available for monitoring and
controlling each unit operation. The process control systems in steel
industry ranges from manual control to fully automated controls.
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The processes in the steel industry need to be equipped with two types of
technologies namely (i) basic technologies, and (ii) advanced
technologies.
Basic technologies are those technologies which are fundamental to the

production processes. They are generally the traditional technologies
developed based on scienti c principles. They are those technologies
which are necessary for the production of the product at the needed
productivity and e ciency level with low speci c consumption of input
materials. Basic technologies normally consist of chemical, mechanical,
metallurgical, or production technologies.
The advanced manufacturing technologies of today use the following ve

technological tools to have the greatest potential to in uence the quality
of the products besides in uencing the improvement in the productivity
and process e ciency.
Automation – A new generation of automation systems are used in the production process which
link the manufacturing process with remote control systems frequently through information
technology. These new automation systems are equipped with remote contact or non-contact
sensors and standardized interfaces, and, in some cases, eliminate totally the human interferences.
This helps in eliminating the quality de ciencies in the products introduced through human errors.
Automation also enables the manufacturing of the product with better precisions and close
tolerances in a cost-effective manner.
Integrated computational materials engineering – This tool creates computer models to simulate
the properties of the products. By equipping the production processes with these models it not only
helps in production of the products which meet the speci cation requirements but also reduces
product rejection rates. This tool helps the process stabilization very quickly during the start of the
manufacturing process. It also reduces the product testing load after its manufacture. This also
helps the process to produce products in a better, faster, and cheaper way.
Digital manufacturing – Digitalization of controls during the manufacturing process helps identifying
and automatically correcting the aws in the products during each step of the production process.
This in turn improves the product acceptance rates.
Industrial internet and exible automation – With the help of such automation, process hardware
can be linked together so that the equipment and machines are able to communicate with one
another and automatically adjust product quality based on data generated by sensors.
Additive manufacturing process – This is a very advance tool which creates three-dimensional
objects based on digital models by successively depositing thin layers of materials. Use of this tool
totally eliminates production of the products which are off in dimension tolerances.
Automation though it is a part of the advanced technologies but often the

terms advanced technologies and automation is used interchangeably. In
this article also both the terms are used interchangeably.
Advanced manufacturing technologies help in addressing a number of the

steel industry needs. These new process technologies boost productivity
and responsiveness to the customers by making it possible for the steel
plants to quickly and easily modify and adjust the production processes
according to customer requirements. As a result, the steel plants can
generate a greater diversity of products from the production processes.
These advanced technologies combine the e ciency of mass production
with custom manufacturing with products made speci cally to meet the
needs of the customers. This is somewhat di cult, and often prohibitively
expensive to do while using conventional technologies during the
manufacturing processes.
Application of advanced technologies to the basic technologies in the

manufacturing processes is a recent trend. Advanced manufacturing
technology applications have a big impact on the product quality. Rapid
advances in information technology, sensors, and nano-materials are
dramatically not only lowering the costs of leading edge manufacturing
processes but also improving their performance in a big way with respect
to the quality of the products. Slowly but surely, digitization has begun to
permeate every aspects of the production processes, from engineering to
management of the supply chain to the shop oor which is making
production systems more intelligent and highly networked and more
product quality oriented. This is helping the steel industry not only to
improve the productivity but also to become more responsive to shifting
customer needs.
The word ‘Automation’ is derived from Greek words “Auto” (self) and
“Matos” (moving). Automation therefore is the mechanism for systems
that “move by itself”. However, apart from this original sense of the word,
automated systems also achieve signi cantly superior performance than
what is possible with manual systems, in terms of power, precision and
speed of operation. Hence, automation is normally referred to the full or
partial replacement of a function previously carried out by the human
operator.
Historically, automation has proven to be an e cient way to achieve cost-

effective production in manufacturing, as well as in the process industry
such as steel industry. In general, automation has also relieved humans
from heavy, dangerous, complex, boring and time-consuming tasks.
Automation has also been extensive not only in the actual production
process of the steel industry but also in supportive tasks (e.g. material
handling, transportation and storage etc.). Further, automation can provide
solutions in highly time-critical situations in which there is insu cient
time for a human operator to respond and take appropriate action or in
other types of situations where the human being proves insu cient in one
or more aspects.
Automation is de ned as a set of technologies that results in operation of

machines and systems without signi cant human intervention and
achieves performance superior to manual operation.
Automation consists of electro-mechanical technologies (computers)

applied to the process systems for the purpose of control of the
production processes to relieve or replace a human operator. This
de nition is broad in the intent of automation, yet focused in its form –
computers. Computers makeup the current generation of control systems
and will be increasingly relied upon in the next to perform automatic data
processing and provide operators with information crucial to effective
decision making.
Automation systems use eld instruments and sensors for the data
collection and its transmission to the processing unit which after analysis
of the data sends signals to the control equipments for the purpose of
controlling process parameters so that these parameters are kept within
the acceptable limits.
Objectives of automation include increase in the reliability and operational

availability of production lines. In fact, automation is applied to man-
machine (human-computer) systems for several purposes which include
(i) improved performance, (ii) enhanced operational safety, and (iii)
increased economy of work force. Systems performance can be improved
by allocating to a computer functions which humans cannot perform due
to inherent limitations in physical capabilities and mental capacities. For
example, dynamic processes too complex for human operators to respond
to manually, need to be accomplished through the use of automation.
System performance can also be improved by allocating to a computer
functions which human operators can accomplish, but are ill-suited for or
that cause high workload and stress levels.
Role of automation system in steel industry include smooth, accurate and

stable functioning of the production processes, basically employed to
produce nished steel products from raw/semi- nished materials using
energy, manpower and equipment and infrastructure. Since the steel
industry being essentially a “systematic economic activity”, the
fundamental objective of the industry is to make pro t which can be
maximized by producing quality products in larger volumes with less
production cost and time, and hence deployment of automation system in
steel industry becomes essential.
Advantages of automation include (i) control of the production process, (ii)

improvement in the manufacturing process especially making the process
more stable by ensuring ease of operation, (iii) improvement in the
productivity, (iv) reduction in the production cycle from raw materials to
the product, (iv) reduction in the speci c consumption of materials as well
as energy, (v) improvement in the quality of the product, (vi) reduction in
the production cost, (vii) improvement in the health of equipment, (viii)
environment management, and (ix) safety of operators and equipment.
Operational safety of technologically advanced systems which are very
common in modern steel industry can be enhanced through automation
which purports to remove human errors from systems by replacing
operators with virtually unerring machines. Automation results into
increased human capacity and productivity, and reduction of operator
workload and fatigue.
Disadvantages of use of automation in steel industry include (i) low

operator job satisfaction, (ii) operator failure to attend to critical system
events (vigilance), (iii) operator over-reliance on the automated systems
(complacency), (iv) low pro ciency of operators in case of emergencies
requiring manual takeover (skill decay), and (v) loss of operator system
awareness. In fact, management of some steel plants see automation as
reducing the status of the operator’s role to a button pusher, stripping him
from using his knowledge and experience in controlling the processes.
This pitfall of passive operator functioning under automation cause in
operators (i) lack of vigilance , (ii) complacency, and (iii) losses in terms of
(manual) skills and situation awareness.
Despite technological advances to develop automated production

processes which can perform functions more e ciently, reliably or
accurately or at a lower cost than human operators in the steel industry,
automation has still not replaced humans in the production processes. In
lay terms, however, it is easy to think of automated systems as not
including humans. However, most of these “unmanned” systems, such as
automatic circuit board assembly operations, involve human operators in
supervisory or monitoring roles.
The supervisory control that the human as a supervisor can be seen as

one or more of the ve generic and interconnected functions. These
functions are as follows.
The rst role for the supervisor is to plan what needs to be done over some period before any
automation is turned on.
The second role is to teach (e.g. instruct, command, program) the automated system with what it
needs to know in order to perform its assigned function for that period.
The third role is to turn on the automation and monitor the automatic action and detect any
deviations or failures.
The fourth role of the supervisor is to intervene in the automatic action if necessary and to decide
on necessary adjustments to the automation.
The fth and nal role is to evaluate performance and learn from observed experience.
With the automation, the role which gets assigned to an operator is that of
a system monitor. He is required to scan displays without taking any
action to change the state of the system unless needed. The sole purpose
of this monitoring is to determine whether a system is functioning
normally or if human intervention is required. The decision to intervene in
process control is in uenced by (i) the accuracy with which an operator is
to perceive the values of system variables, (ii) the likelihood of missing a
critical event while concentrating on other information, (iii) the rewards
and penalties associated with critical events, (iv) the strategy formulated
by an operator, (v) the correlation between events, and (vi) the threshold
below which an operator does not address a critical event. In case of
failure of automation control, it becomes necessary for the operator to
take over the controls of the process for which the operator has to have
the skills and the system is to provide for this take-over of the control.
There are always situations in steel industry when the operator as a

component in the production system has to be involved to be able to
handle machines and equipment during unforeseen situations.
Consequently, both advanced automated systems and skilled human
workers which work together are necessary to achieve exible and
e cient production. Robustness and exibility of the production
processes are therefore the key issues for the automation. However, since
in the steel industry, the processes being very complex and also since the
product customization has increased this complexity, it has become a
requirement that steel industry adopts as an increased level and extent of
automation.
Automation is always associated with control which is a set of

technologies that achieves desired patterns of variations of operational
parameters and sequences for machines and systems by providing the
input signals necessary. There are some of the differences in the senses
that these two terms are generally interpreted in technical contexts. These
are given below.
Automation systems may include control systems but the reverse is not true. Control systems may
be parts of automation systems.
The main function of control systems is to ensure that outputs follow the set points. However,
automation systems may have much more functionality, such as computing set points for control
systems, monitoring system performance, plant startup or shutdown, job and equipment scheduling
etc.
Automation systems are essential for the steel plants where most of the
processes have complex sequences of many operations. Hence today
automation in the steel industry has become indispensable, since it plays
a very special role. Whereas in the early stages it was used only for
process control, today it provides additional information about the plant
condition which helps in planning and preparing precisely the maintenance
and repair of the plant and equipment. Today automation carries
diagnostic functions which are used for condition-based maintenance. It
helps in the increase the reliability of the equipment and their availability
for the production.
Steel industry automation needs several features which includes (i) the
stringency of control precision requirements, (ii) the reliability to withstand
24-hour continuous operation in a plant where operations never stop, (iii)
massive information processing due to the large scale of the operation,
(iv) the stringency of the requirement for high response, and (v) the
di culty of stable operations and “building-in,” due to the complexity of
the manufacturing processes.
The ability of a human operator to control an automated system may be

directly impacted by the level of task planning and performance
interaction maintained with the computer controller. On the other hand,
operator’s ability to respond to and make decisions based on system
information is normally in uenced by various levels of automation. Under
these situations, the level of automation in steel industry can be (i) manual
which is human control with no computer assistance, (ii) decision support
where operator control with input in the form of computer
recommendations, (iii) consensual where computer control the actions but
operator consent is required to carry out actions, (iv) monitored in which
case computer control is automatically implemented unless human
vetoes, and (v) full automation where there is complete computer control
with no operator interaction.
Automation systems can be categorized based on the exibility and level

of integration in manufacturing process operations. Various automation
systems which are used in the steel industry can be classi ed as follows.
Fixed automation – It is normally custom-engineered, special-purpose equipment to automate a
xed sequence of operations. It is used in high volume production with dedicated equipment, which
has a xed set of operation and designed to be e cient for this set. Continuous ow and discrete
mass production systems use this automation. Fixed automation is generally associated with high
production rates and in exible design of the steel product.
Programmable automation – This automation system is used for a changeable sequence of
operation and con guration of the machines using electronic controls. However, non-trivial
programming effort may be needed to reprogram the machine or sequence of operations.
Investment on programmable equipment is less, as production process is not changed frequently.
The system consists of equipment designed to accommodate a speci c class of product changes.
This type of automation is typically used in batch processes where job variety is low and product
volume is medium to high, and sometimes in mass production also.
Flexible automation – This type of automation has the exibility and is used to manufacture a
variety of products. In this automation system operators give high-level commands in the form of
codes entered into computer identifying product and its location in the sequence and the lower level
changes are done automatically. Each production machine receives settings / instructions from
computer. The machines automatically load / unload required tools and carries out their processing
instructions. After processing, products are automatically transferred to next machine. It is typically
used in job shops and batch processes where product varieties are high and job volumes are
medium to low. However this type of automation is associated with lower production rates and
products which needs frequent changing due to their dependence on the demand.
Integrated automation system – It denotes complete automation of a shop of a steel plant, with all
processes functioning under computer control and under coordination through digital information
processing. It includes technologies such as computer-aided design and manufacturing, computer-
aided process planning, computer numerical control machine tools, exible machining systems,
automated storage and retrieval systems, automated material handling systems such as robots and
automated cranes and conveyors, computerized scheduling and production control. It may also
integrate a business system through a common database. In other words, it symbolizes full
integration of process and management operations using information and communication
technologies.
Steel plant automation makes extensive use of “Information Technology”

(IT). Fig 1 below shows some of the major IT areas which are used in the
context of steel plant automation.
Fig 1 Areas of IT in steel plant operation
However, steel plant automation is distinct from IT in the following senses
Steel plant automation also involves signi cant amount of hardware technologies, related to
instrumentation and sensing, actuation and drives, electronics for signal conditioning,
communication and display, embedded as well as stand-alone computing systems etc.
Since the steel plant automation systems are growing more sophisticated day by day in terms of the
knowledge and algorithms they use, they encompass larger areas of operation comprising several
units or the whole of the steel plant, and they integrate production with other areas of steel plant
functioning, such as, material management, customer relationship management, nancial
management, product quality management, cost control management, and sales management etc.,
the usage of IT has increased dramatically in the steel plant automation.
When compared to labour intensive industries the steel industry can be

seen very capital intensive, thus the role and applications of automation
are often different. Instead of totally automated production lines
automation is widely used to improve controllability of processes, quality
of products and automated auxiliary tasks such as material handling. The
distinguishing features of the steel plant automation system include the
following.
The steel automation system is generally reactive in the sense that it receives stimuli from its
environment in which it is functioning and in turn produces responses that stimulate its
environment. Naturally, a crucial component of the steel plant automation system is its interface to
the environment.
The steel plant automation system has to be real-time. By that it is meant that the computation not
only has to be correct, but also must be produced in time. An accurate result, which is not timely, can
be less preferable than a less accurate result produced in time. Therefore automation system is to
be designed with explicit considerations of meeting computing time deadlines.
The steel plant automation system is to be mission-critical, in the sense that the malfunctioning of
any component of the automation system can bring about catastrophic consequences in terms of
loss of equipment and even human loss. Hence extraordinary care is required to be exercised during
its design to make it awless. In spite of that, elaborate mechanisms are often deployed to ensure
that any unforeseen circumstances can also be handled in a predictable manner. Fault-tolerance to
emergencies due to hardware and software faults is frequently built in the automation system.
Levels of automation
There are ve levels of automations which are commonly employed in

steel industry. These levels are given below.
Level 0 – Under this level, there is practically no automation and every control of the equipment and
process consists of manual control.
Level 1 – The level I automation is restricted to the production processes. It includes control of
equipments and production processes. It includes dedicated digital controller (DDC). It does not
include networking. The level 1 automation utilizes more and more modern eld instruments,
remote I/O’s, eld busses and graphical interfaces. In different shops of steel pant the modern AC-
drives provide new tools to advanced speed and torque control. Also the utilization of servo
hydraulics has provided new improved possibilities to control steel production in wide range from
continuous casting machines to small manipulators. Generally the level 1 control systems today are
capable to handle more and more complex MIMO (multi input and multi output) systems and
cascade systems with improved accuracy.
Level 2 – This automation level includes supervisory control. Supervisory control combines the
production scheduling and management information functions with the process control functions to
form a hierarchical control system. It also includes process models, automatic material handling,
tool setting, packing and other auxiliary systems. It utilizes physical process models to supplement
the level 1 control giving calculated set-values to level 1 process control. The process monitoring
and diagnostics play also important role in level 2 systems .In large systems a separate computer
may be needed to handle each level, but in small systems, two or more operational levels might be
collapsed into one computer level. The dedicated digital controllers at level 1 require no human
intervention since their functional tasks are completely xed by systems design and these are not
inter-acted with, on-line, by operators. All other levels have human interfaces as indicated. The level
2 automation systems offer two main capabilities namely (i) tight optimized control of each
operating unit of the plant based upon the production levels and constraints set by level 3
production planning and control (PPC) system by providing optimal operating set points to the
manufacturing processes with this control reacting directly to any emergencies that occur in its own
unit, and (ii) improved overall reliability and availability of the total control system through fault
detection, fault tolerance, redundancy, and other applicable techniques built into the system’s
speci cation and operation.
Level 3 – Level 3 automation system contains scheduling and delivery status monitoring features. It
includes production planning and control functions. Both production planning and production
control functions are included in this level. It also includes maintenance planning and analysis of
data. This system is a total integrated automation system. With this level of automation, the remote
operation in-charge can view all the data. Enterprise resource planning (ERP) is a popular software
based technology related to level 3 automation.
Level 4 – It is just like level 3 controls but under this level control by satellite from a remote area is
possible. The level 4 connects customer orders and material and makes capacity allocation to
production. This complex ERP-system is used to manage the complete order-supply-chain follow-up
and documentation.
Fig 2 shows the functional hierarchy of a control system at the different

level of automation.
Fig 2 Functional hierarchy of a control system at the different level of

automation
Distributed control system
Distributed control system (DCS) is the technology platform which realizes

the level 1 and level 2 automations. Level 1 and level 2 controls can be
achieved normally through programmable logic controllers (PLCs), micro-
processor based systems as well as programmable controllers (PCs) /
work stations, as required. In DCS, each of the automation systems of the
shop is subdivided in accordance with the functional requirements and
covers the open loop and closed loop control functions of the different
sections of the production shop.
Distributed control system has been evolving rapidly since the mid-1980s
from being essentially panel board replacement at their inception to
become comprehensive plant information, computing, and control
networks fully integrated into the mainstream of plant operations. This
progress has been fueled in part by the technological revolution in
microprocessor and software technology as well as the economic
necessity.
Microprocessor-based DCSs made their debut in the mid-1970s. Initially

they were conceived as functional replacements for electronic panel board
instrumentation and were packaged accordingly. The initial systems
utilized discrete panel board displays similar to their electronic
instrumentation counterparts. These systems evolved quickly, adding
video-based workstations and shared controllers capable of expressing
complex unit-operations-oriented regulatory and sequence control
strategies containing scores of functional elements, such as PID
(proportional-integral-derivative), lad / lag / totalizers, dead-time
elements, elapsed timer, logic circuits and general-purpose calculators
By the early to mid-1980s the personal computer industry matured marked

with the IBM PC disk operating system (DOS) as the standard. This gave
birth to the software industry which delivered feature-laden high quality
inexpensive software packages. With this, it became possible to develop a
relatively inexpensive scan control alarm and data acquisition (SCADA)
package for a personal computer platform and integrate it with these
general-purpose shrink wrap software packages, such as spreadsheet,
desktop publishing, or database management and one could have a very
cost-effective alternative to DCS. Because of performance and the general
suitability limitations of these PC offerings, this approach had appeal
mostly in cost-sensitive noncritical applications and where there existed a
low safety or hazard risk. This concept, however, created an expectation
and vision of the future, that is, open architectures.
DCS was developed further and now it includes tools to address real-time
process control applications by incorporating the low-cost shrink-wrap
packages in their systems. Such packages include (i) relational database
management, (ii) spreadsheet packages, (iii) statistical process control
capabilities, (iv) expert systems, (v) computer-based process simulation,
(vi) computer-aided design and drafting, (desktop publishing, (vii) object-
oriented display management, (viii) windows-oriented display
management, and (ix) information exchange with other plant systems.
During the last 1980s and early 1990s the computer industry continued its
transformation. Networking of systems into a cohesive whole promised to
(again) revolutionize the steel industry, which has barely absorbed the
impact of the PC revolution. Software and communications standard
began to take hold, making interoperability among disparate computing
platforms and application software a near-term reality. The steel
organization, including the factory oor, could be moulded into a cohesive
whole by making the various departmental systems work cooperatively at

an acceptable integration cost. These added new technological features to
DCS including (i) open operating system standards, such as UNIXC or
POSIX etc., (ii) open system interconnect (OSI) communications model,
(iii) client server cooperative computing model, (iv) X-window protocols for
workstation communications, (v) distributed relational database
management systems, (vi) SQL (Structured query language) access to
distributed relational databases, (vii) object oriented programming and
platform independent languages , and (viii) computer-aided software
engineering.
These characterize the modern DCS technology. DCSs today are

distributed computing platforms with su cient performance to support
large-scale real-time process applications. Structurally DCSs traditionally
are organized into ve major subsystems, namely (i) operations
workstations which act as the MMI (machine man interface) and provide
visualization capability, (ii) controller subsystems which perform direct
digital control, (iii) data collection subsystems, (iv) process computing
subsystems for process optimization and supervision, and (v)
communication networks. Open system communication standards are
enabling DCSs to receive information from a set of similar compatible
computing platforms, including business, laboratory information,
maintenance, and other plant systems as well as to provide informations
in support of applications, such as given below.
Automated warehousing and packaging line systems so that a complete order can be coordinated
from the receipt of raw materials to the shipment of the nal product.
Laboratory information management systems (LIMs), which perform in-process analysis as well as
quality assurance inspections.
Automated production scheduling for a plant accessing the business system and tying into
manufacturing resource planning systems and nite-capacity scheduling packages.
Application of DCS systems can be found in some areas of operations in

large integrated steel plants.
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 Home : : Technical : : Automation in Steel Industry

 Automation, Computers, Controls, Digital Controller. Automation Levels, Distribted Controls,

Functional Hierarchy, Input/Output, Instruments, Programmable Controllers

Automation in Steel Industry

Steel is an alloy of iron usually containing less than 1 % carbon. Because

Thane Services - Bidla Construction

Basic technologies are those technologies which are fundamental to the

The advanced manufacturing technologies of today use the following ve

tolerances in a cost-effective manner.

This in turn improves the product acceptance rates.

Automation though it is a part of the advanced technologies but often the

Advanced manufacturing technologies help in addressing a number of the

Application of advanced technologies to the basic technologies in the

Historically, automation has proven to be an e cient way to achieve cost-

Automation is de ned as a set of technologies that results in operation of

Automation consists of electro-mechanical technologies (computers)

Objectives of automation include increase in the reliability and operational

Role of automation system in steel industry include smooth, accurate and

Advantages of automation include (i) control of the production process, (ii)

Disadvantages of use of automation in steel industry include (i) low

Despite technological advances to develop automated production

The supervisory control that the human as a supervisor can be seen as

automation is turned on.

on necessary adjustments to the automation.

There are always situations in steel industry when the operator as a

Automation is always associated with control which is a set of

be parts of automation systems.

The ability of a human operator to control an automated system may be

Automation systems can be categorized based on the exibility and level

Fixed automation – It is normally custom-engineered, special-purpose equipment to automate a

production rates and in exible design of the steel product.

Programmable automation – This automation system is used for a changeable sequence of

programming effort may be needed to reprogram the machine or sequence of operations.

Investment on programmable equipment is less, as production process is not changed frequently.

volume is medium to high, and sometimes in mass production also.

processing. It includes technologies such as computer-aided design and manufacturing, computer-

integration of process and management operations using information and communication

Steel plant automation makes extensive use of “Information Technology”

Fig 1 Areas of IT in steel plant operation

However, steel plant automation is distinct from IT in the following senses

communication and display, embedded as well as stand-alone computing systems etc.

functioning, such as, material management, customer relationship management, nancial

the usage of IT has increased dramatically in the steel plant automation.

When compared to labour intensive industries the steel industry can be

be designed with explicit considerations of meeting computing time deadlines.

There are ve levels of automations which are commonly employed in

process consists of manual control.

cascade systems with improved accuracy.

speci cation and operation.

based technology related to level 3 automation.

Fig 2 shows the functional hierarchy of a control system at the different

Fig 2 Functional hierarchy of a control system at the different level of

Distributed control system

Distributed control system (DCS) is the technology platform which realizes

Microprocessor-based DCSs made their debut in the mid-1970s. Initially

By the early to mid-1980s the personal computer industry matured marked

whole by making the various departmental systems work cooperatively at

These characterize the modern DCS technology. DCSs today are

quality assurance inspections.

manufacturing resource planning systems and nite-capacity scheduling packages.