Bell Annealing Shop Scheduler - BASS™
for Windows NT/2000/XP

Wengert Software Engineering, Inc. has developed a shop planning and optimization tool for Windows NT/2000/XP to be used in bell type batch annealing facilities. This tool, specifically designed to optimize the operation of batch annealing facilities, continually evaluates the current state of the shop and optimally plans the usage of furnaces, cooling hoods, bases, cranes and material. BASS™ then instructs the operations personnel when to move equipment and where to move it thus maintaining a balanced shop with maximum throughput at a minimum operational cost.

BASS™ includes a stack building module, Bell Annealing Stack Builder (BASB™), which optimally builds stacks of cold rolled sheet steel coils considering factors like delivery time, coil geometry and weight, heating profile, anneal quality, priority, etc. BASB™ can be run as a stand-alone stack builder or can be integrated as part of BASS™. BASB™ works with newer 100% hydrogen annealing bases as well as older single stack and multi-stack HNX bases. In order to automate coil inventory management and coil selection for stack building, BASS™ includes the Bell Annealing Coil Tracker (BACT™). BACT™ consists of one or more touch screen computers stationed in the overhead cranes that service the annealing area. These computers access the central BASS™ relational database using radio frequency (RF) ethernet communications. Crane operators can use BACT™ to locate coils to be loaded as part of a BASB™ built stack. In addition, BACT™ is used to indicate where a coil is moved, which operator moved it, and any restrictions due to the physical properties of the coil (e.g. coil is greater than 60,000 lbs and therefore must be lifted using a heppenstall rather than a magnet). Finally, BASS™ contains the Shop Manager component (BASM™) which provides an extensive GUI overview and reporting capability to depict crane and base operational schedules. Moreover, the Bell Annealing Shop Manager contains a complete equipment maintenance planning and tracking tool. BASS™ and its components all use state of the art 32 bit programming to produce results fast and to present these results in user-friendly, intuitive displays.

For more information, click on one of the items below.

Download Complete BASS™/BASB™/BASM™/BACT™ Specification PDF file (700 KB)
Right click the above link and choose the option that allows you to save the target file to your local hard drive. You can then open the file using the Adobe Acrobat reader program.

Read the BASB™ technical paper presented at the 2001 Iron and Steel Exposition and AISE Annual Convention
To read this PDF file, right click it and save it to your computer's local hard drive. Then use the Adobe Acrobat reader program to view the technical paper.

Overview of the BASS™ Component Topology

BASS™ System Data Flow Diagram

BASS™ Functional Specification Summary

BASB™ Functional Specification Summary

BASB™ Sample Screen Captures