“Photo metinvestholding.com Mining and metallurgical group Metinvest introduced AI solutions for production quality control at its enterprise. Artificial intelligence detects defects in the production of slabs – metallurgical…”, — write: www.unian.ua
Photo by metinvestholding.comMining and metallurgical group Metinvest has introduced AI solutions for production quality control at its enterprise. Artificial intelligence detects defects in the production of slabs – a metallurgical semi-finished product from which rolled sheets are made at the Zaporizhstal plant. The working name of the solution is ForgeCheck. Projected savings per year – $250,000.Metinvest has been testing artificial intelligence since 2021, says the head of the Metinvest Digital R&D center Maksym Balanyuk: at the Mariupol plant, the technology was used to determine the quality of scrap metal, analyze the quality of sintering of agglomerate, monitor the flow of cars and audit the movement of coil carriers through the territory of the enterprise.
The company started using AI to control product quality at Zaporizhstal in June 2024. The solution helps the worker to identify defects faster when cutting slabs. If a defect was detected, it is highlighted in red on the employee’s monitor, Balanyuk says. If there is a defect, but it is not classified by the system, it is yellow, and if there is no defect, it is green. The accuracy of the model is currently 75-85%. But, taking into account the uniformity of the objects, the model can be extended to 97%.
The main saving for Metinvest is a decrease in the percentage of complaints from customers. “We also save on electricity, because the heated metal does not stand still due to the delay of the slab at the cutting stage,” says Balaniuk.
Balanyuk does not disclose the investment in the decision. But, according to market participants, development from scratch can cost up to $80,000 if open-source technologies are used.
Currently, the portfolio of the Metinvest Group includes 12 metallurgical enterprises, some of which are located in the occupied territory. Therefore, it is difficult to scale AI solutions for slab quality control, since the Group’s enterprises produce different types of products, says Balaniuk. “The priority for next year is to make and put into industrial operation the second version of the AI tool,” he adds.
According to his calculations, this will help reduce the percentage of complaints by 60%. “The indicator will depend on production volumes – if they grow, savings in financial terms will grow as well,” Balanyuk assures.
Potentially, Metinvest is ready to sell the development to competitors. “As soon as we finish testing the second version, we will form an offer for potential partners working in this direction,” says Balaniuk.
We will remind, earlier Metinvest Akhmetov was included in the rating of the largest investors of Ukraine: every year the company invests 12 billion in investment projects in Ukraine. Also, since the beginning of the war, the company has transferred more than 50 billion hryvnias of taxes and fees to the budgets of all levels.