Expert System for Blast Furnace Operation
Quality improvement has become a major focus in the steel industry during the 1980's. Improvements in product quality can be achieved by upgrading and replacing equipment or by standardizing operating procedures and practices. Since upgrading and replacing equipment requires large capital investments, the logical choice for enhancing quality is through operation standardization. Once practices and procedures have been standardized through use of statistical studies and recording operators' knowledge, these can be placed into a computer in the form of an “EXPERT SYSTEM.”
In 1989, Inland Steel in cooperation with Purdue University Calumet began a program to place the Blast Furnace Standard Operations manual into an expert system. The goal of this program is to have the computer recommend operating variable changes to the blast furnace supervisor. Because of the nature of furnaces, the time delay between the operating variables and the operating indicators, our expert system contains a journal as well.