Generating various rolling schedules for the Hot Strip Mill

In this paper, we describe the general strategies of building an expert system for generating the Hot Strip Mill (HSM) rolling schedules. One major goal of this system is to automatically generate schedules which contain a list of slab sequence for each different rolling cycle. The input source to the system is the available slabs in the storage yard. This information is first downloaded from the EDP HSM control file. After process, this system then outputs various rolling schedules which satisfy the specific requirements and constraints, and provide an optimal cost effective result. Several user selective menus plus a graphic dynamic display pattern have provided very friendly user environment. The entire system has been implemented in the NEXPERT Object Development tool. The Linear Model of the expert system life cycle has been adopted to guide the entire process which consists of a number of stages from Planning to System Evaluation. It also describes the development of the system to some point at which its functional capabilities can be evaluated.