Shougang equipped two casters (two strands each) and a hot strip mill in QianAn works and a cold mill, a continuous annealing line and two hot dip galvanizing lines at ShunYi works with QuinLogic software. With the QES software it is possible to handle and combine quality data from different process steps – until recently an unsolvable problem for many users. In addition, the innovative rule based quality certification module evaluates the compliance of the product with the customer’s specification for all process stages. The installation is based on central servers and exploits online data from iba databases, Parsytec, Cognex, Siemens-VAI and several Wonderware InSQL servers. Shougang group is one of China’s top steel producers and among the first to implement government requirements for improved steel production quality.

To achieve a new level of quality control, Shougang’s IT investigated innovative solutions and selected QuinLogic’s QES for its best overall concept and future roadmap. Also the experiences gained at European mills were rated very positive. The objective was to implement a deterministic product quality certification for the entire process chain. The entire solution was implemented in less than three months. This included the creation and verification of new quality rules as well as end-user training. Today, quality rules are entirely maintained and implemented by a team of Shougang quality engineers. YanJun Huang (Member of the Board of Directors, responsible for IT): “On June 22th exactly as planned, the QES went online. We are happy with the fast and smooth implementation. The QES absolutely meets our requirements. Especially the rule building with LogicDesigner exceeds our expectations. Many people got new ideas what else can be solved using the QuinLogic rules approach and therefore extensions are already on the way”. Hans Peintinger (Managing Director of QuinLogic): “Shougang’s requirements were the challenging in number of users, the complexity of the data environment and the short time to go live in production. But our QES has proven a tremendous scalability, reliable generation of quality certificates for every processed coil as well as a breakthrough in usability.”