Iron and steel ladles tracking management system based on RFID and WLAN

In the steel mills, in order to improve the circulation efficiency of iron ladles and steel ladles, save energy and promote the development of industrial automation, an iron ladles and steel ladles tracking management system based on radio frequency identification (RFID) and wireless local area network (WLAN) is proposed in this study. Meanwhile, to obtain the optimal number of online iron ladles, the theory of queuing is proposed for optimising the logistics of iron ladles. The system uses RFID and readers to obtain relevant location information. WLAN is used to realise communication between the crane terminals and the main control. Two queuing models are analysed and compared, then the optimal solution of online iron ladles is quantitatively calculated. Moreover, in order to intuitively reflect the on-site scheduling situation, a visualised operation interface is designed accordingly. The system has been used in a steel mill in Northeast China and achieved good performance.