A New Era of Autonomous Operation

One Room, Plant-Wide Transparency

A Closer Look at the Central Operation Cockpit at Thyssenkrupp Steel

In the control room of hot-strip mill No. 1 in Duisburg, operators now see the entire process at a glance - yet still zoom in on the exact spot that needs attention. More and more steel producers are discovering what autonomous control can mean for their own operations. At thyssenkrupp Steel, hot-strip mill No. 1 is now operated via a Central Operation Cockpit (COC), a setup that has reshaped decision-making on the mill floor. “Before the COC was introduced, decisions were sometimes driven by experience and based on information from individual plant areas,” says Andreas Rotärmel, Head of Production Management Upstream.

Breakage, cobbles, surface defects - there are many potential trouble spots in hot rolling. All of them threaten production and can lead to financial losses, missed deliveries, and dissatisfied customers. That was also true for thyssenkrupp Steel’s hot-strip mill (HSM) No. 1.

HSM No. 1 supplies raw material for nearly all of thyssenkrupp Steel’s flat products, ranging from high strength automotive steels to specialty grades for the metal packaging, energy, and mechanical engineering sectors. Its steel is used, for example, in food and beverage cans, transformers, motors, and other products made from high-strength specialty grades. In short, it is a key facility in thyssenkrupp’s European operations - one that cannot afford avoidable mistakes.

Traditionally, operating a conventional hot-strip mill comes with several risks: missing a critical event, misreading information from automation systems, or taking the wrong corrective action under time pressure. These were well-known challenges at HSM No. 1, and thyssenkrupp Steel was actively looking for ways to streamline operations and reduce those risks for its operators.

At the same time, Primetals Technologies had spent years developing and refining a new type of centralized control system. The guiding vision was an autonomous plant. In practice, this meant an interface where operators could immediately see where intervention was needed - and receive clear, data-driven guidance on what to do next. The principle behind it is simple: make the right decision at the right time to increase plant performance and product quality.

After learning about this development, thyssenkrupp Steel reached out. Primetals Technologies and thyssenkrupp Steel agreed to implement a Central Operation Cockpit (COC) at HSM No. 1 in Duisburg. The pulpit and its workflows were tailored to tkSE’s needs - down to the details that shape operators’ daily work. The preparations included a prototype of a modular control-room concept at Primetals Technologies’ test site in Fürth, Germany, and a dedicated workshop for tkSE’s operators. Their feedback was not an afterthought; it shaped the system they would later use under real production pressure.

“The ongoing involvement of the operators contributed significantly to the success of the commissioning process, as the improvements identified during operational trials were continuously implemented and integrated into the COC,” says Sebastian Kallabis, Lead Engineer at HSM No. 1.

The complete COC was first built and tested at the Primetals Technologies site, then transferred to Duisburg, where it underwent additional on-site testing before it went into operation. “Thanks to the excellent interdisciplinary collaboration among all departments involved, the project was successfully implemented in accordance with the qualitative and quantitative requirements of a hot-strip mill,” Kallabis says.

The difference was clear from the start: operators immediately recognized the new setup’s advantage. The COC is not just a wall of screens showing what is happening in the mill; it has built-in intelligence based on clearly defined rules. That intelligence governs how human-machine interfaces (HMIs) appear, which live cameras to highlight at a given moment, when to trigger audio cues to direct the operator’s attention, and even how the room’s colors change - for example, switching to red during an alarm.

“Modern visualizations, material tracking systems, digital assistance functions, and expanded automation enable faster, data-driven, and cross-departmental control,” says Andreas Rotärmel. “This allows for more informed decision-making, earlier detection of deviations, and the implementation of more targeted measures. Digital assistance systems, modern control rooms, higher levels of automation, and improved safety standards support operators in their daily work.”

Behind those technical elements is a human story: operators who used to rely largely on intuition and fragmented data now work in an environment designed to surface the right information at the right time.

Today, there are seven COCs installed worldwide at hot-strip mills, continuous tandem cold mills, or pickling lines and tandem cold mills. They are either already in operation or scheduled to start up by 2027. Each COC is supported by at least 50 cameras as well as numerous Digital Assistants. At these plants, COCs have contributed to more stable operations and a reduced workload for operators.

To make the concept tangible, Primetals Technologies operates three COC showrooms: in Erlangen, Germany; Linz, Austria; and Beijing, China. Here, customer-specific scenarios can be simulated and refined. The Linz showroom can also replicate several different types of upstream scenarios.

Industry recognition has followed. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, the parent company of Primetals Technologies, honored the COC with its President’s Award as an outstanding achievement within the Group. In early 2026, Primetals Technologies also received the “Best of Industry” award for the COC, presented by several leading industry media outlets in Germany. Winners in each category were chosen entirely by the market, with more than 25,000 votes cast.

Awards and showrooms, however, are only reflections of what happens on the mill floor. The real test of the COC is in critical production situations - such as at HSM No. 1 in Duisburg, where a 10-meter-long slab is rolled into a strip up to 1.7 kilometers long. This is a complex, tightly coupled process in which wrong decisions can have far-reaching consequences. Today, much of that complexity is managed through the COC.

“Before the COC was introduced, decisions were sometimes driven by experience and based on information from individual plant areas,” Rotärmel recalls. “With the COC, we now have greater transparency regarding material flow, quality data, and plant conditions.”

That shift - from experience-based decisions to plant-wide transparency and data-driven support - illustrates how the concept of the autonomous plant is becoming concrete, step by step. With installations like the one at thyssenkrupp Steel and several more projects currently underway, the industry is moving closer to that vision.

It starts with the potential for a single operator, supported by intelligent systems, to control the complex operation of a hot-strip mill.

The journey has just begun.