EUROPEAN STEEL TECHNOLOGY AND APPLICATION DAYS 2017 - ESTAD 2017

European steel is decisively driven by product quality and customer demand. Industry 4.0 is yet a blurry term, nowadays being praised for bringing disruptive advantages for modern manufacturing industries in the next decades. Many people are overwhelmed by the diversity invoked by the word Industry 4.0 and although many applications are emerging, practical examples are rarely described or shown in technical detail. This paper presents clear examples focusing on product quality. For keeping their competitive edge, steel producers are longing for methods to ensure a successful production that satisfies the customer and provide substantial economic benefits for the producer. A smooth and unobstructed production process chain is therefore a common goal and obligatory precondition for high product quality. Different Industry 4.0 techniques are shown to optimize the quality of steel products. The talk gives clear advice to producers how to actually put Industry 4.0 concepts into real-world application, demonstrating a series of steel-industry proven, modular solutions that exploit newest technologies and which achieve increased economic performance. Practical examples consider the production of flat-steel products, focusing onto the process chain from re-heating furnace hot rolling mill and the pickling line. Here, the discussed technologies are demonstrated, highlighting the practical aspects and new advantages: Re-adaption of the process chain to cope with surprising issues, prediction of deficiencies and strategies for optimizing according aggregates.