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The paper discusses an engineering procedure, which enables the automation of the process of calculating furnace heating and thermostatic control parameters of hot-charged steel slab blanks under the rational heat treatment conditions. During hot charging, the blanks coming out of a continuous casting machine at an average temperature of about 1,000°С are placed inside the heating furnaces in the hot condition, which results in a considerable decrease of their heating time, incremental reduction of specific fuel consumption, and lowering of the metal oxidation level. The procedure allows calculating the required duration of heating of the slabs loaded into the furnace in the hot condition with a sufficient degree of simplicity and accuracy and without the use of nomograms. It also allows determining the required duration of thermostatic exposure (i.e., soaking of heated slabs under adiabatic conditions) to equalize the temperature profile over the slab cross-section. The provided relationships can be used to determine the heating duration for slabs with different thicknesses depending on the temperature at which they were charged into the furnace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]