Primetals Technologies Austria GmbH (Linz, Austria):

Flick A., Chief Technology Officer, e-mail: andreas.flick@siemens.com

Forecasts for tomorrow help to quantify future market demands and anticipate customer needs. What will continuous casting technology look like in the future? Increasing scarcity and diminishing raw material quality will have an impact on the design of casting machines. Continuous casting will also offer potential to recover and utilize process energy. The requirements of economical efficiency and environmental acceptability will be met. Human-machine interface will be improved and optimized. Intelligent mechatronic modules will support efforts to achieve increased process flexibility. Industrial expert systems will support the users in definite situations or during definite operations. Plant operations will be fully monitored and controlled thanks to a continuous interchange of data and information between the real and virtual worlds. Standardization and simulation will help to accelerate developments and to rise operation efficiency. Maintenance models will provide partnership of a lifecycle. Service sites capable of remotely managing operations and maintenance will become commonplace on the basis of data from condition monitoring systems. This will result in new business models.

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