A novel application of a knowledge-based system to water cool steel sections

Allied Steel and Wire (AS&W) is a European steel producer which has recently implemented advanced manufacturing technology in one of its plants. A critical factor in the investment is the ability to cool steel sections rapidly and effectively. The cooling ensures that customers are delivered sections within specified European tolerances and with no metallurgical defects. The previous process relied on natural cooling of steel sections prior to their packaging, which typically took 24 hours. This resulted in unnecessary delays and stock holding costs. The cooling process was therefore considered a major bottleneck. The paper describes a collaborative teaching company programme between AS&W and the Logistics Systems Dynamics Group, University of Cardiff, via the transfer of systems engineering and knowledge based systems expertise. The latter is to provide intelligent control (via an expert system) of a water cooling system to replace the previous natural cooling process. The methodology for developing the knowledge base is outlined. The methodology includes the derivation of cooling curves, appropriate rules for control and product family categorisation. The improvements resulting from the implementation of the system are quantified via the start-up learning curve. This has seen capacity more than double in the last 20 months