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Simetal Quality Expert Automates Quality Assurance During Continuous Casting

Jul. 12, 2012 Siemens is providing operators of continuous casting plants with a new tool for automated quality control: the Simetal Quality Expert. The expert system compares quality-related process parameters with the actual values in production and such analyzes the quality of the products. It supports the plant operator with online alarm signals and a quality forecast. With the Quality Expert implemented, inspection and post-processing of the products become obsolete to a great extent. Material losses and handling activities are significantly reduced and at the same time form the basis for consistently higher product quality. This in turn lowers production costs. Because all relevant product and process data are automatically entered, evaluated and stored, the system also provides a basis for certification, for example according to the ISO 9001 standards.

Quality Expert is a completely new development and replaces the VAI-Q quality assurance system that has been installed in more than 200 plant systems. The new system was developed with the objective in mind of providing the plant operator with the most flexible tool for consistent and dynamic provision of all relevant data. The system can be quickly and simply adapted to changing production conditions. This is supported by a sophisticated data tracking system and a rule editor that is configurable according to user requirements. The quality forecast is made by means of configurable rules or optional self-learning algorithms. Because the quality forecast data of the Quality Expert are immediately available following production, lower-quality products can be removed directly from the process chain. Products meeting the quality standards, on the other hand, can be further processed.

Effective quality control and assurance are important competitive factors in the manufacturing of modern steel grades for sophisticated applications. Final customers expect from steel producers gap-free documentation of quality-related parameters and procedures that fully comply with certified standards. The implementation of specially designed and highly automated quality assurance systems is required in order to process and supply the large volumes of production and quality data.

The user interface of the Simetal Quality Expert can be integrated with the operating and monitoring system of other products in the Simetal series, including the CC Optimization process optimization package for casting plants, the Dynacs strand cooling system and the DynaGap soft reduction solution.

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