Normalizing is the most widely used industrial process because it is more economical to normalize steel compared to annealing. In normalizing, the furnace is ready for the next cycle as soon as the heating and equalizing is over, as the cooling takes place in air, whereas annealing takes from 8 to 20 hours, depending on the charge, while in annealing, the cooling of the furnace after heating and equalizing takes from 8 to 20 hours. Therefore, in many cases, annealing is replaced by normalizing to reduce heat treatment costs. If the performance requirements are not very stringent, normalizing is used.