Abstract :
The American steel industry is constantly facing challenges presented by new competitive materials, rising foreign imports, increasing labor costs, and new more complex technology. Steel industry customers are demanding and receiving tighter tolerances on their steel strip, sheet, and plate products. Steel is an ancient industry, when compared to today´s space industry. Simple, cheap solutions are pretty well exhausted. Plant processes are both extremely expensive and productive. While change has been a way of life for years in the steel industry, the opportunities for profitable change today are fantastic compared with five years ago, due mostly to the digital computers. The self-regulation and tighter control achievable with automatic feedback, in addition to the unifying concepts of systems engineering, provide a proved technical approach to the solution of today´s steel plant manufacturing and production control problems. The logic and discipline of critical task network planning are being used to assure profitable on-schedule implementation of automation systems that fully utilize the potentialities of both the present day digital computers and the current engineering technology.
