An expert system for raw materials scheduling in a steel mill

The authors describe a rule-based scheduling system for handling raw material movements within a steel mill. The system has been built using InfoLink´s proprietary rule-generator ExTran, which was found to greatly assist the knowledge acquisition process for automating the scheduling task. The ExTran raw material scheduling system performs decision-making by examining data derived from an online process control database. This database is updated in realtime by a separate process control system using information derived from a multitude of sensors which detect belt-conveyor breakdowns, bin levels, etc. ExTran´s task is to select from the daily raw material transfer request file a set of candidate schedules for the next eight hour scheduling period. These are displayed on a console in the operator´s control room, where they can be accepted, queried, or modified