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Brussels, Belgium, 10/09/2007 – The existing implementation of the AIS SteelPlanner solution at voestalpine in Linz, which has been in operation for 4 years, is optimizing on a daily basis the schedules of the casters and the hot strip mill and is one of the main components of the hot-charging solution in place. With the addition of a new walking beam reheating furnace, some new optimization possibilities are exploited using the new furnace optimizer.
The SteelPlanner Furnace Optimization module is part of BetaPlanner, the mill scheduling solution of the SteelPlanner suite. It optimizes the slab charging and discharging sequence using a combination of a pure thermal and/or a fix charging pattern model. This model considers the reheating time needed for each slab and considers the best furnace to use at a given moment in time. This optimization is done considering the constraints from two pusher type furnaces and the new walking beam furnace as well as the process and logistics constraints related to the HSM.
AIS succeeded in realizing the main goal of the project of using the full capacity of the new reheating furnace by reducing the furnace and/or mill bottlenecks as well as to provide better support for the hot-charging objectives of voestalpine Stahl.
Mr. Kurt Brunner, Project Manager at voestalpine says: “With this project we target to optimize the furnace scheduling process for the different variants of furnaces and to keep the conditions of the mill scheduling process. We have selected AIS because it is a company with a high competence in steel scheduling and our experiences with the AIS Company during our first project were very well”.
The furnace optimizer in BetaPlanner closes the gap between the level 3 schedulers and the level 2 furnace optimization facilities. The project has been finalized on schedule in June 2007.
The AIS Group, headquartered in Linz, Austria, is a leading supplier of planning and scheduling systems for the metals industry. Solutions from AIS increase the efficiency of expensive heavy equipment through the optimization of capacity planning and production schedules. Numerous references worldwide of the SteelPlanner® family of planning, scheduling and control solutions underline the effectiveness and reliability of SteelPlanner® for the metals industry.
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