Blast furnace a testimony to Baosteel's smart AI use

Smart factories

Baosteel designated 2024 its "Year of AI" and set a goal of developing 1,000 models to embed AI across production processes. To date, the technology has been applied in more than 600 scenarios.

"From the perspective of a single process, the AI smart blast furnace — what we call the 'AI furnace manager' — is actually a strong example of best practice in our operations," said Wu Wenbin, director of Baosteel's data and AI department.

According to the company's paper on AI application scenarios published earlier this year, AI now covers six major business segments and 23 scenario categories. A total of 162 AI achievements have been recorded, generating economic benefits of over 270 million yuan. The company is also actively contributing to industry standards and co-building an AI-driven industrial ecosystem.

A global first "intelligent driving" grading framework for production lines has been introduced by the steelmaker, drawing on autonomous driving logic to establish a Level 1–5 smart manufacturing maturity system.

The applications of AI in core processes have also achieved breakthroughs. Six major new applications now span the entire production chain, from ironmaking and steelmaking to rolling and quality inspection, with all performance outcomes quantified and verifiable.

Over the past 30 years, Baosteel has progressed through three stages of development — informationization, digitalization and intelligentization, Wu said.