9th ECCC European Continuous Casting Conference – ECCC 2017

The digital transformation achieves a structural change in automation – a transformation of process automation into a new and more efficient structure. Today's hierarchical automation pyramid is replaced by a flat structure of intelligent, flexible and autonomous units. It is important that the metal industry makes an active contribution to implement digitalization in their production plants throughout the entire value chain. Digitalization for intelligent production synchronizes process-, machine-, and product-data for integration with business data in a “Smart Factory”. “Smart Services” enable data based services for example predictive / data analytics. Smart Work provides assistance in maintenance and operation. Smart examples for the caster area are given in this paper. The next generation of model-based process automation control is to link the real plant with the virtual plant in a so called “Cyber-Physical System”. This is done by modelling and simulation of the casting process for example by integration of material properties according to the actual composition, strand surface temperature profiles and dynamic soft reduction before the final point of solidification. The aim of the digital transformation and crosslinking of production provides high flexibility and efficiency in production, high plant availability and high product quality. Primetals Technologies is committed to digitalization and to realize the connected plant by continuously pushing latest innovations in automation in a close cooperation with customers.