Steel tubes can be classified in various ways, and from a manufacturing perspective, they can be divided into welded steel tubes and seamless steel tubes. This article focuses on the planning and scheduling issues in the production of seamless steel tubes. Since the production planning and scheduling of seamless steel tubes are closely related to their production process, familiarity with the production process can facilitate accurate implementation of production plans and scheduling.
The production process of seamless steel tubes typically consists of hot deformation treatment and cold treatment. Hot deformation treatment involves continuously processing steel billets under high-temperature conditions to form a shell, using equipment such as piercers, continuous casting machines, and stretch reducing mills.
Cold treatment, also known as the finishing process, refers to the process of converting the shell into a finished steel tube under normal conditions. This process includes cooling, straightening, cutting, flaw detection, and other steps.
There are various processing methods for seamless steel tubes, including hot rolling, cold rolling, and cold drawing. However, most customer orders require the hot rolling process. The hot rolling process flow of seamless steel tubes is illustrated in Figure 1, which involves tube blank cutting (material folding), heating in a furnace, piercing of solid tube blanks, rolling of the tube walls to reduce thickness by an extension mill, hot rolling procedures, reheating in a furnace, finishing rolling, and finally, processing into a finished seamless steel tube.
