Report of Ph.D thesis of Mr.

Rajat Kumar Panigrahy entitled SYSTEM AUTOMATION IN STEEL SECTOR: A CASE STUDY ON ROURKELA STEEL PLANT submitted to FM university Vyasavden, Balasore. The scholar has proposed some of innovative and intelligent tools for the system automation in steel sector in particular to Rourkela Steel plant. He has started with the each ground of the various phase of modernization and need for automation in the process controlled addisitional system and monitor of all function arise within the industry. In the chapter 1 the scholar explained the need for automation and briefly mentioned the chapter aisation of the thesis. In chapter-2 the author introduce the existing structure of Rourkela steel plant architecture of Industrial automation, interqrated material management system, production planning and control system of RSP. He has also highlighted the automation of vehicle tracking system, GPS based vehicle transport system of Rourkela steel plant. He has given a clear cut layout of various system and lucidly explained about the ingration of various systems of the steel plant. In chapter- 3 the author has presented the proposed method of automation Hot Strip Mill of Rourkela Steel Plant taking into consideration the core function of Hot Strip Mill, existing processes and the demerit of its process output. He has suggested the mathematical model in the mill controller of Hot Strip Mill which can produce precision level HR coil. He has also claimed as his thesis that the proposed method would lid to minimize energy consumption and also prediction of surface Temperature of slab in the furnace which will give a clear picture of fuel requirement.

In chapter-4 the scholar has proposed AM model hor slabs in reheating furnace of Rourkela Steel Plant. He has studied _________ about the automation gauge control __________ and the other control start of Hot Strip Mill. He has also studied the undi control system of Rorkela Steel Plant with respect to the supervisory control and SCADA and DCS and PLC. He has studied the laumar in Reheating Furnace with respect to the robustness, adapt belly and nonlinearly of the various complex furnace of Reheating furnace and proposed and ANW based model for temperature modeling of slabs in Hot Strip production at Reheating furnace.

The author has claimed the proposed method can save a considerable amount of energy at reheating furnace. In chater-5 the scholar has studied the system automation of EMS of Rourkela Steel Plant. Taking the energy information system of the plant the author has studied in depth about scope of Energy minimization at Rourkela Steel Plant. He has located more than 20 processes where corrective maintenance would minimize the consumption of energy which finely leads to reducing in power demand at minimize the cost of production. In chapter-6 the scholar has studied about the Supply Chain Management which is always critical factor in steel industry. He has studied the complexity in Supply Chain Management and proposed an automated RFID system for Supply Chain Management at Rourkela Steel Plant. He has given a comparative statement of the time frame of supply, transportation register, identification and tracking of coil using RFID and without automated system.

In chapter-7 the scholar has proposed ERP for RSP. ERP is a new dimension in the steel industry automation the scholar has studied ERP implementation in various other steel plants and found the scope of implements in RSP. Further the scheme introduces Soft computing tools for uncertainty management and Risk management in RSP. Finally the scholar has guess the conclusion and further duration of automation of steel industry action of some application of soft application tools in steel industry.

The research work is a comprehensive study of steel industry in general and Rourkela Steel Plant in particular The thesis has embedded innovative ideas with original thoughts in the area of _____________ of Supply Chain Management and application of Soft Computing tool.

In my opinion the thesis is comparable to any quality research of work and acceptable in present form for award of PhD degree.