Slab Tracking AI

Bring real-time intelligence to every slab in the yard with Roboflow Vision AI for slab tracking. Built for steel mills where slab IDs are painted by hand or stamped on hot steel, where a slab placed in the wrong stack becomes an hour of searching, and where charging the wrong slab into the furnace means the wrong grade at the hot mill.

Read every slab ID:

• Read painted, stamped, and marked slab IDs at the caster runout, in the yard, and at the furnace, with a model trained on your own markings.
• Read IDs on hot and cold slabs, on the end face or top surface, through scale and uneven paint.
• Match each ID to its heat number, grade, dimensions, and order in the level 2 system.

Know where every slab is:

• Record each crane move with the slab ID, from location, to location, and stack position.
• Keep a live yard inventory by bay and stack, next to overhead crane monitoring.
• Flag a slab placed in the wrong stack or bay for its schedule.

Protect the rolling schedule:

• Confirm the right slab is at the furnace entry for the rolling schedule, and hold a mismatch.
• Detect surface cracks, corner cracks, and edge defects on slabs as they pass cameras, next to metal surface defect detection.
• Keep an image and ID record for every slab for traceability and customer certificates.

Bring intelligence to every slab today. Stop misread IDs and lost slabs from becoming charging errors, wrong grades, and customer claims.

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Frequently asked questions

What is slab tracking with Vision AI?

Slab tracking with Vision AI uses cameras at the caster runout, in the slab yard, on cranes, and at the reheat furnace and a trained computer vision model (opens in a new tab) with OCR to read painted and stamped slab IDs, track each slab's location and stack position, match it to heat, grade, and order, and confirm the right slab is charged. It sits alongside steel coil identification and tracking and industrial OCR across the mill.

Can Vision AI read hand-painted and stamped IDs on hot slabs?

Yes. A detector finds the marking on the slab end or top, and an OCR model trained on your own paint styles, stamps, and fonts reads it through scale, glare, and uneven paint. Heat-shielded cameras and the right angle at each read point keep IDs readable on hot steel, and matching each read against the expected sequence from level 2 confirms the ID even when a character is partly covered.

Does slab tracking support ISO 9001, IATF 16949, and EN 10204?

Slab tracking supports the identification and traceability requirements of ISO 9001 (the quality management system standard), IATF 16949 (the automotive quality management system standard, for automotive grades), and EN 10204 (the standard for metallic product inspection documents, including mill test certificates) by keeping an image and ID record for every slab through the yard.

Roboflow serves as the reading and tracking engine, and your quality and production teams own the traceability rules and certificate process.

Can it integrate with our level 2, yard management, and crane systems?

Yes. Roboflow sends slab IDs, locations, and events over OPC UA, MQTT, or REST (opens in a new tab), or writes them to a database, so they update level 2 and MES systems, yard management systems, and crane controls through a PLC. Furnace entry checks can hold charging until the slab ID matches the rolling schedule.

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