Modeling Steelmaking and Continuous Casting plants by Timed Petri Nets

In this paper we deal with the problem of modeling and simulating the Steelmaking and Continuous Casting (SM-CC) processes. The SM-CC production processes are very complex and exhibit production cycles that have to be managed with suitable sequencing and scheduling procedures in order to minimize blocking and bottleneck conditions. The paper describes in details the SM-CC process by a modular approach in a Timed Petri Net framework. In order to show that the modeling procedure is suitable to describe large systems, we model and simulate a real case study involving a SM-CC plant located in the North of Italy.