An Anticipatory Control Based on On-Line Real-Time Simulation for Supporting Rescheduling of Complex Industrial Plants with High Automation System

The goal of this project is to create a real-time based virtual plant for an easier automated re-scheduling of production plan. Consider a real system plant (steelmaking plant for our case study), with complex logistic for machines placement: the system needs a production order list and the initial plant status, then an initial optimized production planning is generated to satisfy orders. During the production, accidents or other contingencies are possible and an immediate production planning re-scheduling is needed. Introducing a virtual plant all significant events that modify the planned production story introducing delays (i.e. increasing the lead time), we can see the plant status in real-time and for all stored possible events (particularly accidents) the system calculates and shows a new optimized re-scheduled production plan. At the same time the proposed system is able to provide a cost reduction over the energy purchase by interacting actively with the free market.