Accurate prediction and stabilization of blast furnace temperatures are crucial for optimizing the efficiency and productivity of steel production. Traditional methods often struggle with the complex and non-linear nature of the temperature fluctuations within blast furnaces. This paper proposes a novel approach that combines hybrid quantum machine learning with pulverized coal injection control to address these challenges. By integrating classical machine learning techniques with quantum computing algorithms, we aim to enhance predictive accuracy and achieve more stable temperature control. For this we utilized a unique prediction-based optimization method. Our method leverages quantum-enhanced feature space exploration and the robustness of classical regression models to forecast temperature variations and optimize pulverized coal injection values. Our results demonstrate a significant improvement in prediction accuracy over 25 percent and our solution improved temperature stability to +-7.6 degrees of target range from the earlier variance of +-50 degrees, highlighting the potential of hybrid quantum machine learning models in industrial steel production applications.

Blast furnace modeling and control is one of the important problems in the industrial field, and the black-box model is an effective mean to describe the complex blast furnace system. In practice, there are often different learning targets, such as safety and energy saving in industrial applications, depending on the application. For this reason, this paper proposes a framework to design a domain knowledge integrated classification model that yields a classifier for industrial application. Our knowledge incorporated learning scheme allows the users to create a classifier that identifies "important samples" (whose misclassifications can lead to severe consequences) more correctly, while keeping the proper precision of classifying the remaining samples. The effectiveness of the proposed method has been verified by two real blast furnace datasets, which guides the operators to utilize their prior experience for controlling the blast furnace systems better.

An advanced conceptual validation framework for multimodal multivariate time series defines a multi-level contextual anomaly detection ranging from an univariate context definition, to a multimodal abstract context representation learnt by an Autoencoder from heterogeneous data (images, time series, sounds, etc.) associated to an industrial process. Each level of the framework is either applicable to historical data and/or live data. The ultimate level is based on causal discovery to identify causal relations in observational data in order to exclude biased data to train machine learning models and provide means to the domain expert to discover unknown causal relations in the underlying process represented by the data sample. A Long Short-Term Memory Autoencoder is successfully evaluated on multivariate time series to validate the learnt representation of abstract contexts associated to multiple assets of a blast furnace. A research roadmap is identified to combine causal discovery and representation learning as an enabler for unsupervised Root Cause Analysis applied to the process industry.

Machine learning applied to generate data-driven models are lacking of transparency leading the process engineer to lose confidence in relying on the model predictions to optimize his industrial process. Bringing processes in the industry to a certain level of autonomy using data-driven models is particularly challenging as the first user of those models, is the expert in the process with often decades of experience. It is necessary to expose to the process engineer, not solely the model predictions, but also their interpretability. To that end, several approaches have been proposed in the literature. The Local Interpretable Model-agnostic Explanations (LIME) method has gained a lot of interest from the research community recently. The principle of this method is to train a linear model that is locally approximating the black-box model, by generating randomly artificial data points locally. Model-agnostic local interpretability solutions based on LIME have recently emerged to improve the original method. We present in this paper a novel approach, VAE-LIME, for local interpretability of data-driven models forecasting the temperature of the hot metal produced by a blast furnace. Such ironmaking process data is characterized by multivariate time series with high inter-correlation representing the underlying process in a blast furnace. Our contribution is to use a Variational Autoencoder (VAE) to learn the complex blast furnace process characteristics from the data. The VAE is aiming at generating optimal artificial samples to train a local interpretable model better representing the black-box model in the neighborhood of the input sample processed by the black-box model to make a prediction. In comparison with LIME, VAE-LIME is showing a significantly improved local fidelity of the local interpretable linear model with the black-box model resulting in robust model interpretability.

In the current era, an increasing number of machine learning models is generated for the automation of industrial processes. To that end, machine learning models are trained using historical data of each single asset leading to the development of asset-based models. To elevate machine learning models to a higher level of learning capability, domain adaptation has opened the door for extracting relevant patterns from several assets combined together. In this research we are focusing on translating the specific asset-based historical data (source domain) into data corresponding to one reference asset (target domain), leading to the creation of a multi-assets global dataset required for training domain invariant generic machine learning models. This research is conducted to apply domain adaptation to the ironmaking industry, and particularly for the creation of a domain invariant dataset by gathering data from different blast furnaces. The blast furnace data is characterized by multivariate time series. Domain adaptation for multivariate time series data hasn't been covered extensively in the literature. We propose MTS-CycleGAN, an algorithm for Multivariate Time Series data based on CycleGAN. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time CycleGAN is applied on multivariate time series data. Our contribution is the integration in the CycleGAN architecture of a Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM)-based AutoEncoder (AE) for the generator and a stacked LSTM-based discriminator, together with dedicated extended features extraction mechanisms. MTS-CycleGAN is validated using two artificial datasets embedding the complex temporal relations between variables reflecting the blast furnace process. MTS-CycleGAN is successfully learning the mapping between both artificial multivariate time series datasets, allowing an efficient translation from a source to a target artificial blast furnace dataset.

The article presents a solution approach for the Torpedo Scheduling Problem, an operational planning problem found in steel production. The problem consists of the integrated scheduling and routing of torpedo cars, i. e. steel transporting vehicles, from a blast furnace to steel converters. In the continuous metallurgic transformation of iron into steel, the discrete transportation step of molten iron must be planned with considerable care in order to ensure a continuous material flow. The problem is solved by a Simulated Annealing algorithm, coupled with an approach of reducing the set of feasible material assignments. The latter is based on logical reductions and lower bound calculations on the number of torpedo cars. Experimental investigations are performed on a larger number of problem instances, which stem from the 2016 implementation challenge of the Association of Constraint Programming (ACP). Our approach was ranked first (joint first place) in the 2016 ACP challenge and found optimal solutions for all used instances in this challenge.

Development of black-box modeling techniques, like support vector machine (SVM), neural networks, etc., has shown rather rapid in the past decades (Yuan et al., 2016; Zhao et al., 2015; Wu et al., 2013). This sort of techniques, compared to white-box modeling methods (also called mechanism-based modeling or first-principles modeling), works without any need of knowing the internal structure or details on variables interaction in systems considered, so they are suited to describe extremely complex objectives, such as human brain (Khosrowabadi et al., 2014), black hole (Grumiller et al., 2012), integrated industrial processes (Gao et al., 2012) and so on. Essentially, blackbox modeling is an input-output data-based approach, and the model precision mainly depends on data quality, model structure and parameters identification algorithm. In order to develop high-precision black-box models, it always needs reliable and representative data, smart mathematical treatment and efficient identification algorithms. All of these are challenging the development of the black-box modeling techniques.

Few places evoke the rise and fall of Japan's industrial might than the head office of the Imperial Steel Works in Kitakyushu. The red brick Meiji Era building was the heart of the nation's first big steelworks. Kitakyushu, with nearly a million people, embodies the struggle of Japan's cities to adapt to a future where citizens are older, workers are fewer and many houses are emptying. The emblems of government efforts to revitalize the economy -- a billion-dollar airport, a robotics factory -- stand beside the empty lots, an idle blast furnace and shuttered shops. Five hours west of Tokyo by shinkansen, Kitakyushu lost over 15,000 people in the five years to 2015, more than any other city in the country apart from those evacuated because of the Fukushima nuclear disaster.