Abstract: A process and a device for comprehensive control of a basic industry plant, such as a steel plant or an integrated iron works, which includes subprocesses that are critical with regard to continuous material flow, e.g., casting processes. The invention optimizes the material flow through the system and prevents the interruption of the material flow prior to the start of subprocesses that are critical with regard to continuous material flow. The process sequence in a subprocess is subdivided into four steps, referred to as quarter cells with each quarter cell containing a point in time, a time range to describe possible process time fluctuations, the name of the previous quarter cell, i.e., the name of the previous substep of a subprocess, as well as a marker of whether the process time fluctuation of this subcell is influenceable or non-influenceable.