Integrated Subsystems of Materials and Information Flow for Continuous Manufacturing of Coal and Steel

Abstract With the concept of Industry 4.0 production processes are moving towards autonomy and intelligence. Technologies equipped with artificial intelligence (AI) are involved into processes that are more and more digitized. Collaborative technologies are a feature of discrete processes. The automotive industry has achieved many successes in the process innovation towards smart factories. Other plants, such as smelters or coal mining are also striving to develop smart manufacturing with integrated computer systems to support processes. A continuous production is different from a discrete or batch production. Industry 4.0 concept is focused on discrete production (with high level of automation and robotization of manufacturing) meanwhile there is a gap in implementation of these approach in the continuous production. The objective of the publication is to prepare and design the integrated computer management system based on processes realized in coal and steel manufacturing. Coal and steel production are key elements in a chain of any industrial manufacturing e.g. automotive or machinery engineering. These processes are crucial in building of smart value chain. In our paper we present the structure of processes for the continuous production. Based the processes model we proposed the next steps to build the smart manufacturing for continuous production.