A Move to IT

I decided to shift a bit towards software engineering (Information Technology) in 1998. Training period started in 1998 with C/C++/MFC/OOAD/VB, etc., and ended with the successful completion of Microsoft Certified Application Developer (MCAD), for both Web- and Windows-based applications, and Microsoft Certified Database Administrator (MCDBA) certification programs, in 2005. Most training classes were taken during my employment as a software engineer in the steel industry. This included, for example, the employment as a software engineer to design and develop Level 2 system and other mill applications. Since 1999 I have been developing steel mill related software applications, either as a job or for own. Up to now, I have successfully completed 30 computer classes. I am not sure how many computer classes are required for a Ph.D. of computer science - probably less than 30.

The decision to move to IT was based on various considerations. The initial drive was to utilize the rolling process models I developed to perform automatic design and simulation. In the decade before 1998, my work was mainly on rolling process modeling and simulation, so I have developed tremendous number of concepts on developing software to perform automatic design and analysis of engineering process. Software can help reduce workload of design engineers, it can also optimize design procedure and improve product quality. Most complicated interactive influence factors on the engineering process can only be handled with software, while in current design, they have to be greatly simplified. Besides, many models are far beyond the understanding of average design engineers. In this situation, good programming knowledge has been essential for me to bring my concepts into real-world application.

The next reason was mainly based on working environment consideration. I realized since 1990s, that human society has gradually evolved from social division of labor into international labor division. USA had made tremendous effort on High-Tech, particularly IT. In contrast, European countries and Japan, etc. still work hard on engineering. Due to the pressure of strong dollar (it happened at least in the years around 1998), manufacturing industry hesitated to make wide range and long term technological development, though its technical level has fallen behind those of Germany and Japan. It seemed a true talent need to find a way to fully utilize his skills and knowledge. If I can properly combine the software development with engineering logics, and use engineering/manufacturing know-how as business logic for the software development, I may achieve a great success. Also, the manufacture center, China (in which steel/metal business is one of the hottest and fastest growing areas) and SE Asia, with vast market and tremendous development potential, are eagerly waiting such technologies to emerge. I was born in China, educated in Germany and now work in USA. One valuable job for me, is to collect, evaluate and utilize engineering research results worldwide, especially from Europe, Japan, etc. as algorithm, and to develop engineering software with advanced US software technology. Southeast Asia should be an important market for the developed software.

In addition, the work of modeling and simulation I did in past years was directly computer related. I already had basic computer and programming skills and spent five years in a UNIX computer laboratory even before the intensive computer training I started in 1998.

The ten-years computer training (1998-2008) has greatly improved my software engineering skills. However, due to my concentration on the programming, and my surrounding environment of IT (neighbored with Intel and Microsoft) rather than the metal industry, I neither came to the East to attend conferences nor published anything. To the main stream of the steel industry, I suddenly disappeared after I left Morgan. Now after relocating to Pittsburgh, I am gradually recovering this loss. For example, in the February to March 2008 alone, I had six publications accepted by international conferences or by influential authors such as V. Ginzburg as portions of new books. Right after the first paper in 2008 was accepted by AIST (aist.org), AIST offered to include me into its Computer Application Committee.

Honestly, I do feel the responsibility to help the steel industry. There is no reason that the software engineering in the steel industry should be ten to dozens years behind the IT industry. Do you know when the Fortran was a popular programming language in the IT industry? In today's steel industry, Level 2 systems written in Fortran and running in OpenVMS are still quite popular. Besides, there might be still more urgent issues. While the metallurgical processes such as controlled rolling are very popular today, any Level 2 vendor (SMS, VAI, Danieli, etc.) in the world has included metallurgical principles in its Level 2 model? Metallurgists know that due to the lower rolling temperature than traditional practice, up to 80% of the strain from previous passes could be retained (inherited); and how much trouble could be caused to the Level 2 learning system due to the ignorance of this 80% of strain from the previous pass? More problems are in hold and two-phase region rolling, etc. Therefore my help to the industry would be the process model + computer, rather than the computer alone. To be stressed again is that, the initial driving force for my computer training was to apply my process models.