Slab Tracking AI
Read the painted or stamped ID on every slab, track each slab's location and stack, and keep it matched to its heat, grade, and order.
Slab Tracking AI for the Toughest Casters, Slab Yards, and Hot Strip Mills
Deploy Anywhere, Run Everywhere
Run slab tracking on caster runout, yard crane, and furnace entry cameras on the edge, on-prem, in your VPC, or via API.
One Platform, Full Adoption
Tools every steel mill team can adopt, from yard and logistics supervisors to caster engineers, no separate ML team required.
Secure, Compliant, and Audit-Ready
Data stays safe with SOC 2 Type II compliance, encrypted data, HIPAA compliance, and an uptime SLA.
- Painted & Stamped Slab ID Reads
- Slab Location & Stack Position in the Yard
- Heat, Grade & Order Matching
- Wrong Slab at the Reheat Furnace
- Slab Surface & Edge Defects
- Crane Move & Yard Inventory Records
“Roboflow has been instrumental in accelerating our deployment of innovative AI solutions.”
Travis Turnbull
Vice President & CIO, Pella Corporation
Talk to a Vision AI engineer who's shipped in steel and metals.
Bring us your toughest slab tracking problem and we'll map a working solution.
Ask us about:
- Solution architecture that fits ISO 9001, IATF 16949, EN 10204, and your level 2 and yard management systems
- A live demo on your own caster, yard, or furnace footage
- Deployment options: edge, on-prem, air-gapped, VPC, or on heat-shielded cameras and yard crane cameras
- ROI modeling against mixed slabs, yard search time, charging errors, and customer claims
Over 16,000 organizations build with Roboflow.
- Rivian
- Pella
- Chobani
- USG Corporation
- BNSF Railway
- American Woodmark
Vision AI is transforming businesses
Customers across the board are solving complex challenges and driving meaningful impact.
- Automotive customer
$10 million
Saved by automatically detecting defects on the production line
- Logistics & freight company
90%
Less time spent manually tracking shipping inventory
- Building materials supplier
60%
Lower customer return rate with improved product quality
Track Every Slab by ID, from the Caster Runout to the Reheat Furnace
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.
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 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, 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.