An autonomous decentralized process computer system for steel production

The reconstruction of the total process control system for cold rolling of steel is described. The goals were to allow the production of more kinds and smaller lots of products with higher quality; to achieve a more flexible system, with high expandability and maintainability; and to increase software productivity. To satisfy these requirements, an autonomous decentralized architecture was adopted for the development of the new system. The system, called the cold rolling autonomous network system (CANS), is described. With this architecture, higher productivity has been achieved, and excellent expandability and maintainability have been confirmed