Monitoring of an ingot making facility via principal component analysis and its variants

Abstract

The ingots are a key intermediate product manufactured in the steel making industries. The article delves into the monitoring of the ingot manufacturing facility by making use of the multivariate process monitoring techniques. In order to deal with the various scenarios arising during the production of ingots, different variants viz. multi-block principal component analysis and multi-way principal component analysis are also employed to monitor the process and feed stock characteristics. A comparative analysis of the merits and demerits of the employed variants is also presented in the article based on the case study. On the basis of the findings it may be concluded that the decision regarding the methodology to be adopted depends upon a trade-off between the scope of application of the methodology and the ease of development.