The raw materials for iron and steel will become increasingly diverse and of lower grade in the future. Recycling scrap of various grades of iron resources will increase in the future, and the use of direct-reduced iron will also increase. The direct use of coals as reducing agents will increase, and measures to implement degrading coals will be enhanced to provide more effective utilization of less expensive resources. Flexible processes capable of accommodating fluctuating product demands will be necessary. Quality requirements for steel products have become increasingly stringent, requiring a manufacturing process that can ensure a precise composition control, composition uniformity, and very low levels of impurities. These requirements will be met by better refining and solidification processes. The purpose of a manufacturing process is to manufacture the required amount of products of consistent quality as efficiently and economically as possible and to deliver these products on time. This requires extended equipment life and increased productivity of facilities by synchronization, continuation, and integration of elementary processes using improved automation and advanced control technology. In elementary processes, where automation and control have already been realized, processing of material from an upstream process is possible with minimal disturbances, constant quality, and delivery to the next process on time. These elementary processes compose the whole system, and, as a result of integrating these elementary processes into the whole system, material flows in the proper quantities throughout the process. Furthermore, the occurrence of defective products is minimized in intermediate processes. Products of the required quality can be manufactured in the necessary amounts when required, without excess. If the conventional elementary process can be simplified or omitted in the course of system integration, the benefits become even greater. This is exemplified by the omission of both the ingot making and primary rolling processes and their replacement by continuous casting, and by the simplification of annealing by the continuous process. Other examples include the continuous rolling of slabs. This has been accomplished by rolling slabs in the roughing mill into sheet bars, in-line welding of the resulting sheet bars, and continuously rolling the welded sheet bars in the hot strip mill without interrupting the rolling operation. Also included is the replacement of continuous slab casting and hot rolling of specific steel grades by strip casting, which will become a commercial process very shortly for austenitic stainless steels. In processes which are now under development, more emphasis will be placed on environmental protection and energy saving. Attempts to solve these problems have already started, and some examples are described in the following sections.