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AIS to Provide SteelPlanner Solution for ArcelorMittal Asturias Plate Mill
06/17/2008 - AIS Group will install its SteelPlanner technology on ArcelorMittal’s Asturias heavy plate mill to improve scheduling and plate nesting as part of a major expansion project.
ArcelorMittal Asturias has contracted the AIS Group to install its SteelPlanner® technology to improve scheduling and plate nesting as part of a major expansion project on the heavy plate mill of Avilés.
To increase the plate mill’s efficiency, AIS Group will implement its BetaPlanner module, which is designed for rolling mill scheduling optimization.
Another SteelPlanner module, PIANO (Plate Intelligent Assignment and Nesting Optimization), will manage the assignment and nesting of plates in mother slabs. PIANO automatically generates cutting plans for combinations of customer plates and assigns those combinations to existing mother (and daughter) slabs from the stockyard. The module manages the nesting of customer plates into mother plates, the nesting of those mother plates into existing slabs, and the scheduling of those slabs for the cutting table.
In addition to plate nesting optimization, PIANO will also help generate the slab requirement for both the local continuous caster, which is scheduled with AIS’s AlphaPlanner solution, and from other ArcelorMittal steel plants.
The sequence in which the daughter slabs will be processed by the mill will be solved by the BetaPlanner, considering an extensive number of technological and logistical constraints. BetaPlanner will also care for the cadence of the two normalizing furnaces.
‘This project contributes and supports our strategic goal of De-bottlenecking, increasing production capacity up to 800,000 tonnes/year, as determined by ArcelorMittal Global Plate Organization” said Jean-Pierre Mullié, Manager of Flat Rolling of ArcelorMittal Asturias.
The project started in the first quarter of 2008 and will be taken live in the fourth quarter of 2008.
The AIS Group, headquartered in Linz, Austria, is a leading supplier of planning and scheduling systems for the metals industry. The company lists numerous references worldwide for the SteelPlanner family of planning, scheduling and control solutions underline across the metals industry.
