Jun 17 2008
As part of a major expansion project on the heavy plate mill of Avilés, ArcelorMittal Asturias selected the AIS solution to improve scheduling and plate nesting.
BetaPlanner, the well proven AIS module for rolling mill scheduling optimization, will be implemented to increase the efficiency of the plate mill. Another SteelPlanner module, PIANO – Plate Intelligent Assignment and Nesting Optimization, will manage the assignment and nesting of customer 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 a stockyard. It handles the nesting of customer plates into mother plates, the nesting of those mother plates into existing slabs, as well as the scheduling of those slabs for the cutting table.
On top of the plate nesting optimization, PIANO will also help generate the slab requirement for both the local continuous caster (already 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 Kt/year, as determined by ArcelorMittal Global Plate Organization” says Jean-Pierre Mullié, manager of Flat Rolling of ArcelorMittal Asturias. The project started in Q1 2008 after a comprehensive selection process and will be taken live in the Q4 2008.