Customer Interview: Dr. Ronald Plaut - Using neural networks in aluminum extrusion process control

Dr. Ronald Plaut is a professor at the University of São Paulo, Brazil in the Department of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering since 1975. Dr. Plaut is a graduate of the University of São Paulo and earned his Masters and PhD in Metallurgical and Materials from the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom in 1974.

Dr. Plaut has been using NeuroSolutions along with NeuroSolutions for Excel since early 2005 for optimizing the processing of materials such as aluminum. Several variables influence the exit temperature of the extruded profile such as the alloy type, length, temperature of the billet, extrusion ratio, peak pressure and acceleration ramp.

Using a one-hidden layer Multilayer Perceptron in NeuroSolutions Dr. Plaut maintained a mean squared error less than 1% on the out-of-sample data set making it very viable under industrial conditions. Not only is the neural network approach faster and improves current “predictions”, but also allows data optimization providing practical equations that may be used in press management applications.

Dr. Plaut enjoys NeuroSolutions because of it "being user-friendly and having a clear layout". When asked why he chose NeuroSolutions over competitive products he stated it was because of the "prompt (customer service) replies" and "pricing".

We would like to thank Dr. Plaut for interviewing with NeuroDimension and for his insights on the metallurgical industry and we wish him continued success with NeuroSolutions.