1. Description of recent belt-train technologies

1.1 The slab park

The slab yard acts as a buffer stock between the upstream – steel mill and continuous caster – and the train, which itself receives orders from the downstream – cold mills and direct customers –. If there were no scheduling constraints, the two flows - upstream and downstream - would be perfectly coordinated, and intermediate stock would be very low. In reality, however, the production constraints of the continuous caster and those of the strip mill are not the same, and a buffer stock is necessary if maximum production is to be achieved:...