The Award was established in 2005 to honor James Farrington, founder and first president of AISE and his vision for iron and steel companies to join together, present papers, share mutual problems and set standards for the improvement of electrical machinery and processes. The award was presented to the author of the paper Franck Adjogble, and co-authors Harald Rackel, Gregor Schneider, Klaus Pronold, Wolfgang Spies, Hans-Georg Jentsch. The paper was judged by the Electrical Applications Technology Committee to be the best technical paper submitted at AIST conference.
SMS group is a global, leading partner for the metal industry. As a systems supplier, SMS group supplied all the plants and process know-how for the steel complex of Big River Steel, Osceola in the United States, and has supported BRS during commissioning. Ever since starting operations, they have achieved a steep run-up curve in hot strip production. Covering a site of 567 hectares, Big River Steel is North America’s most modern steelworks. In the first construction stage, the plant is designed for 1.6 million t/a of steel. The steelmaking plant went on stream together with the CSP^® plant in December 2016.
To ensure top quality, Big River Steel uses the PQA^® (Product Quality Analyzer) system SMS group developed in cooperation with the subsidiary MET/Con Metallurgical Plant & Process Consulting. The system collects and evaluates quality data of all products produced at all steps as well as quality-relevant process parameters along the entire process chain, from steelmaking to the finished product. Here, the process parameters can consist of measured values and results, but also complex criteria applied for quality analysis.
Big River Steel is mastering flexible production planning with fluctuating and partly small batch sizes while adhering to deadlines supported by this set-up with SMS group’s approach for digitalization or the learning steel mill. It ensures intelligent, largely autonomous steel production. This involves the interconnection and collaboration of humans and machines across the entire value chain in dynamic production processes that adjust to optimum parameters in real time. Digitalization is not an end in itself; it is rather a means to further increase productivity and thus profitability as well as increase the flexibility and the resilience of the installed value chain.
The prevailing architectural view of a Smart Factory considers AI, Data Science and related technologies to be the next higher level, a layer on top of existing conventional plant automation and information systems. In contrast, the SMS’ philosophy, called “Learning Factory”, integrates these new and emerging technologies into a synergy with the conventional, well-established systems.
The paper describes the implementation of the Learning steel mill concept at Big River Steel – the world’s first ‘Learning’ Steel Mill.
_{(Source: SMS group)}