Optimization and performance improving in metal industry by digital technologies

ended

The INEVITABLE Innovative Action aims to realize a fully digitalized monitoring technology for an optimized and improved performance of manufacturing processes. Use cases from the energy and resource intensive sectors steel and nonferrous metals are addressed, whereas the considered manufacturing sites are in Slovenia, Austria and Spain covering primary and secondary steelmaking and investment casting of nonferrous metal alloys. The focus of INEVITABLE is to develop high-level supervisory control systems for different production plants and on the demonstration in operational environment (TRL 7) to enable autonomous operation of the processes based on embedded cognitive reasoning. Key Performance Indicators will be defined related to resource consumption and product qualities. Based on that, a full digital transformation of the plants will be done including acquisition, storage, processing and analytics of data streams, furthermore, communication and automation, and finally, standardization of relevant data interfaces. Predictive models will be developed being combined with smart and networked sensor technologies to correlate process parameters with quality indicators of the manufactured products. The models will be tested in offline mode on the one hand, and in online mode on the other hand by means of comprehensive plant trials at the industrial partner sites. Dissemination activities will transfer the knowledge throughout the SPIRE sectors. The industrial partners are supported by scientific partners with excellent competences in the field of digitalization. INEVITABLE will improve the capabilities for reliable and real-time control logics of final product properties and process efficiency to increase the flexibility of plant operators. Improved and flexible production performance is expected with a simultaneous reduction of resource consumption and CO2 emissions contributing to a more competitive and sustainable metallurgic industry within the EU.