Simulation of the Pig Iron transportation system in companhia siderurgica tubarao: Arcelor group

The objective of this paper is to present the development of a simulation model involving materials handling in a large steel company from Arcelor Group. The project had a return of more than 2 million USD and points to a kind of application that seems to be a typical case where static analysis may cause great errors comparing to a dynamic one (because the results were also observed in another Brazilian steel company). The project focused in the processes involving pig iron transportation between the blast furnaces and its discharge in the steelmaking plant. It allowed the evaluation of several operational parameters such as for the 7.5 Mt/year production rhythm, a great increase from the actual production of 5 Mt/year. "Bottlenecks" in the flow were identified through the results and the scenarios gave the support to the decision of increasing the number of torpedo-cars and locomotives in the system.