A cura di R. Carli.................................................................................................................................. pag

“"A situation calling for people with solid technical/scientific background, eventually with high educational profile, but, most important, people proving capabilities of mixing-up their understanding, their perspectives in the quest of best solutions for a future world of steel. The 10th European Conference on Continuous Casting has been the 2021 great occasion for this mixing-up."

Ing. Riccardo Carli Prosimet SpA

APROPOS OF 10TH ECCC

The current special issue of La Metallurgia Italiana, publishing some of most interesting papers presented at the 10th European Conference on Continuous Casting, held in Bari on 20-22 December 2021 and perfectly organized in hybrid format by the always flawless Associazione Italiana di Metallurgia, appeals for a reprise of major arguments of the chairman opening speech. A funny story from which one can drive a lesson, has been proposed.

The funny story A reach man seeking other ways for making more money offered a grant to different researcher teams to develop a method capable of foreseeing the results of any horse race. After a while, the team of physicists comes up with an exact approach to the problem… “We have a model for correct guess of race results. This model requires measurement, evaluation and approximation of up to 20000 physical proper-

ties”.

Then the mathematicians team shows-down. “There we are… a mathematical model for prediction of race results requiring the evaluation of only few parameters for a singular race-event. Our model is a convolution of different multi-layer neural nets and it needs a database of at least 10000 events”.

Well, you can imagine, the reach guy starts to be a little disappointed, when the engineers team marches into the room. The spokesperson of the team stated loudly. “We have a model which guarantees a 90% bet success…” “Okay, how many whatever parameters, data you need to make that working?” ask the guy expecting similar crux emerged for the previous models…

“We need to measure just one parameter for each and any racer… with a metering tape. Our model has a single data entry the radius of the horse which is assumed to be spherical…”

The lesson

Straight away, may we learn something from this joke? It sounds bizarre but we have to recognize that our brain spans on all these three dimensions of problem solving phase space, showing different grades of approximation; scientific fundamentals understanding, phenomenological correlations and systematic empirical knowledge. How to handle a highly complex problem requiring living competences which we can describe as a hyper-surface in this phase space? Only possibility is to combine different views of that problem in a framework of collaborating individuals ready to share they understanding. The size of challenges we are facing in steel production field is really impressive, just consider de-carbonization, energy efficiency, AI automation and robotization, designing and producing new steel grades… A situation calling for people with solid technical/scientific background, eventually with high educational profile, but, most important, people proving capabilities of mixing-up their understanding, their perspectives in the quest of best solutions for a future world of steel. The 10th European Conference on Continuous Casting has been the 2021 great occasion for this mixing-up. During the conference days, it has been very exciting seeing people thrilled by staying together long after last met, scholars discussing with operators and managers from different sides of steel casting arena, suppliers with customers, competitors exchanging opinions on the future scenarios. The outstanding level of the many papers presented at the conference certainly triggered these lively ideas mingling which we wish to revive very soon, but for now let’s have a look inside the present issue of La Metallurgia Italiana.