Case Study Preventing Nonconformities With PSImetals Quality Indicators
It’s what’s inside that matters.
Ensuring steel products meet the highest quality standards is crucial in today’s competitive market. PSImetals Quality Indicators (QI) offer a sophisticated solution for quality control based on comprehensive process data aggregation and evaluation. This case study explores how PSImetals QI has transformed the quality control process in steel manufacturing.
Steel manufacturing requires rigorous quality control to ensure that products align with customer specifications. Direct and immediate measurement of all quality features is often impractical. PSImetals Quality Indicators address this challenge by synthesizing numerous parameters into single, actionable values, configured to reflect the manufacturer's knowledge of product and process quality.
Challenges
Final steel product quality results from the interaction of various product and process parameters throughout the production route. Controlling each parameter individually within industrial tolerances does not always guarantee high-quality results. Cross-line quality control, however, is a complex task that requires not only comprehensive product knowledge but also precise collection of process data from multiple sources. Additionally, traditional quality control methods often involve lengthy and labor-intensive testing processes, especially for semi-finished products like continuous cast slabs or blooms. While metallography methods are precise, they are not feasible for real-time quality assessments, leading to delays that can hinder production efficiency and increase costs.
Objectives
- To reflect the complexity of the influence of process parameters on final product quality
- To reduce time and effort involved in quality inspections
- To leverage existing process data for real-time quality assessments
- To leverage metallurgical knowledge for automated, cross-line quality control
- To identify quality issues as soon as possible and minimize downgrades and delivery delays
Solutions
PSImetals Quality Indicators (QI) utilize material-specific process data from various production steps. QIs convert high-resolution, complex data sets into single values, allowing for immediate quality decisions.
For example, in continuous casting, parameters like casting temperature, distribution level, mold vibration, and casting speed are used to determine slab quality without requiring metallographic analysis. This method relies on proven correlations between these process parameters and material quality, capturing the essential quality indicators in real-time.
Process data of several production steps can also be map along the production route and combined into QIs. For example, hot rolling, cold rolling and annealing data can be used to evaluate the homogeneity of the mechanical properties of a steel strip along its length.
Results
The implementation of PSImetals QI has significantly improved the efficiency and reliability of quality assessments. By using process parameters to derive quality indicators, metals producers can now make informed and automated quality decisions immediately after each production step. This advancement leads to:
Key Results
- Shorter lead times in quality assessment.
- Reduced operational costs due to minimized manual operations.
- Leverage specific product and process know-how for preventive quality control.
- Improved yield and overall product quality.
- Enhanced customer satisfaction through consistent product quality.
Conclusion
The introduction of PSImetals Quality Indicators has enhanced the quality control process in metals production, ensuring that products meet stringent standards more efficiently. Looking ahead, the PSI team plans to extend the use of Quality Indicators into the field of product-based sustainability monitoring. Additionally, the integration of Machine Learning services for QI calculation is also planned.
