The steel industry, as a pillar of the national economy, has its self-controlled development closely related to national industrial security. According to the “2025 White Paper on Large PLC Self-Control in China” by Rui Industrial, the large PLC market in China’s steel industry has long been dominated by foreign brands such as Siemens, Schneider, and Rockwell, with domestic manufacturers holding less than 10% market share.
With the Tianxing PLC independently developed by Baoxin Software as the core of the industrial operating system, a comprehensive domestic solution covering the entire steel production process made its debut at the 25th China International Industrial Expo, providing new answers to industry pain points and injecting new momentum into industry development.
The industrial operating system undertakes functions such as device interconnection, data processing, and instruction scheduling, with PLC serving as the underlying execution terminal, working in coordination with SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) and DSF (Digital Industrial Field Platform).
Architecture diagram of Baoxin Software’s Tianxing industrial operating system
In the four core processes of traditional steel production: ironmaking, steelmaking, hot rolling, and cold rolling, every surge of molten iron and splash of steel is a fierce game with high temperature, high pressure, and high speed. Baoxin Software has deep expertise in the entire process control of the steel industry, and its independently developed Tianxing PLC naturally exhibits excellent adaptability across all processes:
Ironmaking Process
As the source link of steel production, the extreme conditions of 1500°C in the blast furnace impose strict requirements on the stability and real-time performance of the control system. The Tianxing PLC achieves high reliability in critical control links through a triple “redundancy safety shield” of CPU main control redundancy, network redundancy, and remote IO stations. Combined with the Tianxing DSF and Tianxing OCI monitoring systems, the data exchange cycle is shortened to within 10ms, with a single node data processing capacity of 1.6 million points/second, allowing operators to achieve precise remote control of blast furnace parameters through a 3D visualization interface, effectively improving production efficiency and stability.
Baoxin Software’s Tianxing industrial operating system ironmaking solution
Steelmaking Process
Steelmaking is the core link to ensure the quality of steel products. Traditional architectures face high risks of single-point failures and significant data transmission delays. The Tianxing industrial operating system adopts a “discrete-process coordinated control + high-speed network support + data collaboration empowerment” technical architecture, achieving a low-latency response of ≤5ms for the entire process from oxygen lance detection data collection to control command issuance through a “main and auxiliary coordination” redundancy system of multiple sets of large and medium PLCs, combined with a southbound 1ms-level high-speed network protocol, ensuring precise control of key parameters in the steelmaking process and rapid recovery from faults.
Baoxin Software’s Tianxing industrial operating system steelmaking solution
Hot Rolling Process
The hot rolling process requires extremely high precision in equipment coordination and data transmission speed. The Tianxing PLC achieves refined control of the entire process of heating, rolling, and cooling through a “fine control + high-speed communication + data collaboration” technical solution. The control layer supports mixed programming of CFC and C language to meet complex process logic development needs; the network layer significantly improves transmission efficiency, enabling synchronous dynamic roll gap adjustments across 7 stands; and the RapidNet communication network is built to ensure stable transmission of massive production data, helping hot-rolled products achieve internationally leading precision levels.
Baoxin Software’s Tianxing industrial operating system hot rolling solution
Cold Rolling Process
Cold rolling, as the final forming link in steel production, requires extreme control precision. The Tianxing PLC innovatively adopts a distributed control architecture, deploying multiple sets of large PLCs according to the processes of pickling, rolling, and annealing, avoiding computational load bottlenecks under centralized control modes. The Tianxing DSF establishes a data ecosystem between processes using digital steel coils as carriers, truly achieving data sharing and precise data alignment to the centimeter level.
Baoxin Software’s Tianxing industrial operating system cold rolling and annealing solution
In the large-scale application of Guangxi Hongwang’s cold rolling continuous annealing unit, the Tianxing series products significantly enhance the overall efficiency of the unit, achieving product quality that meets international advanced standards, fully validating its technical strength in the high-end cold rolling field.
As the steel industry transitions to a self-controlled, efficient, and intelligent phase, Baoxin Software has launched the fully self-controlled Tianxing industrial operating system, centered around the Tianxing PLC, achieving breakthroughs in the entire software and hardware chain, and deeply adapting to the four core processes of ironmaking, steelmaking, hot rolling, and cold rolling, laying a solid technical foundation for the entire steel production process and reinforcing the safety and stability of the industrial chain.
Editor: @ERIC
