On August 14, the Hebei Provincial Industrial Brain On-Site Observation and AI-Empowered Industrial Cluster Collaboration Event was held in Yongnian, Handan. As one of the on-site observation venues, Hebei Yongyang Special Steel Group welcomed nearly 200 representatives from industrial and information technology authorities, industrial clusters, and artificial intelligence companies across the province to visit its Digital Intelligent Control Center and corporate exhibition hall. In the afternoon, the company was invited to deliver a special presentation at the conference, comprehensively showcasing its achievements in applying AI across the entire value chain of the special steel industry.

Company Visit: Delegates Experience Yongyang’s Digital Intelligence in Special Steel

Starting at 9:00 a.m., participating representatives arrived at Hebei Yongyang Special Steel Group in groups and visited the company’s Digital Intelligent Control Center and corporate development exhibition hall. The guide introduced the overall architecture of the company’s 5G+ fully connected smart factory, AI production application scenarios, and integrated digital supply chain covering production, supply, and sales. Guests stopped to view the real-time production data displays and asked in detail about the operating logic and cost-reduction and efficiency-improvement results of systems such as one-click steelmaking, predictive equipment maintenance, and intelligent energy management. The delegates highly recognized Yongyang’s practical approach to using artificial intelligence to drive the transformation and upgrading of a traditional special steel enterprise.




 

Experience Sharing: AI Empowerment Across the Entire Production and Operations Process

That afternoon, at the exchange conference held at Yongyang International Hotel, the company delivered a presentation themed “Digital-Intelligent Steelmaking, Smart Operations Management,” sharing its experience in applying AI throughout the entire production and operations process. As a key upstream raw material supplier supporting the Fastener Industrial Brain, the company explained how full-chain digitalization strengthens the raw material foundation of regional industrial clusters and provides a replicable and practical real-enterprise model for the digital transformation of the province’s steel and specialized industrial clusters. To address practical challenges in information technology development, the event also invited experts from within and outside Hebei Province to build a bridge for knowledge sharing through a “theory + case study + demonstration” approach.

Digital-Intelligent Transformation: Building Industry-Leading Digital Capabilities

As an industry leader with 33 years of experience in special steel, the company began its digital transformation as early as 2017. After years of development, it has established an industry-leading “12342” overall digital-intelligence architecture:

One Cloud: A private cloud built on hyper-converged infrastructure to support the computing needs of the entire plant;

Two Networks: Full-coverage 5G private network + gigabit optical network, enabling data collection points to transmit production data in real time;

Three Platforms: An industrial connectivity platform, an industrial data middle platform, and an industrial visualization middle platform, fully breaking down information silos across workshops and business functions;

Four Application Scenarios: Digital production, digital operations, digital office management, and digital transactions;

Two Safeguards: Cybersecurity protection and a standardized data management system, providing a solid foundation for secure digital production.

Supported by this underlying digital infrastructure, the company built Hebei Province’s first 5G+ fully connected digital intelligent factory. It has subsequently received multiple national-level honors, including recognition as a National Typical Case of Digital Supply Chain by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, Level L3 Digital Supply Chain Maturity Certification, AAA Certification for the Integration of Informatization and Industrialization, and recognition as a Typical Case of Quality Improvement by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. The production lines have achieved intelligent autonomous control throughout the entire process.

The company has deployed a series of AI applications, moving beyond superficial digital transformation and focusing on five core business challenges: production, raw materials, equipment, energy, and finance. Multiple independently developed and continuously iterated AI intelligent systems have been implemented, using algorithms to replace experience-based manual decision-making and delivering multiple benefits in quality improvement, cost reduction, efficiency enhancement, and safety. These applications are bringing traditional steelmaking into the “large-model era”:

AI-Powered Scrap Steel Visual Grading System: Unmanned Raw Material Inspection

Traditional scrap steel grading suffers from inconsistent inspection standards and high-temperature, high-risk working environments. By combining AI visual inspection algorithms with edge computing, the system automatically identifies scrap categories, impurities, and hazardous materials, standardizes inspection criteria, and significantly improves the efficiency of vehicle entry inspections. It enables full-process data traceability for raw materials, eliminates disputes arising from manual quality inspection, and strengthens quality control from the very source of production.

Intelligent Steelmaking Large Model: Enabling “One-Click Steelmaking”

A vertical industrial large model was trained using historical data from 200,000 heats and integrated with metallurgical mechanism algorithms to dynamically issue optimal process parameters in real time. The qualified rate for end-point carbon content in converter steelmaking increased from 75% to 97%, the smelting cycle per heat was shortened by five minutes, and metallic material consumption was reduced by 4.5 kilograms per ton of steel, saving tens of millions of RMB in production costs annually. At the same time, the company has developed an AI steelmaking knowledge brain that captures the expertise of experienced furnace supervisors and enables the digital inheritance of process knowledge.

Predictive Equipment Maintenance Platform: From Reactive Repairs to Proactive Prediction

Using large numbers of workshop sensors to collect equipment vibration, temperature, and current data, machine-learning algorithms identify equipment abnormalities in real time and predict remaining useful life. Maintenance plans are issued in advance, significantly reducing unplanned downtime, lowering the cost of excessive maintenance, extending the service life of key rolling mills and converter equipment, and ensuring continuous and stable production line operation.

Intelligent Energy AI Dispatching System: Green, Low-Carbon, and Energy-Efficient Operations

Using a dual-model approach combining hybrid mechanism models and machine learning, the system predicts plant gas production and remaining consumption requirements 120 minutes in advance, intelligently dispatches energy across the pipeline network, and stabilizes pressure fluctuations. It saves more than RMB 10 million in annual energy procurement costs and supports greener, lower-carbon, and more intelligent production.

AI-Powered Intelligent Payment and Collection System: Fully Paperless Financial Risk Control

Through direct bank-enterprise connectivity, AI robots automatically match and reconcile business documents with bank transaction records and intelligently identify non-standard financial descriptions. This reduces repetitive reconciliation work for finance personnel, creates a complete online audit trail across financial processes, strengthens capital risk management, and meets standardized requirements for audit and internal control.
 

This province-wide observation event represents strong industry recognition of Yongyang Special Steel’s achievements in digital-intelligent transformation and marks a new starting point for the company to further deepen AI applications. Going forward, the company will continue to improve its enterprise data lake and expand large-model application scenarios across seven major areas: procurement, smelting, rolling, quality, equipment, energy, and safety. It will build a self-evolving and self-optimizing “Steel Industry Brain,” continue sharing practical experience in the digital transformation of the steel industry, and collaborate with regional Industrial Brain platforms and AI service providers to provide a practical enterprise model for the intelligent upgrading of manufacturing across Hebei Province, driving high-quality development of the special steel industry through digital-intelligent technologies.