1.  Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of operating a roll stand arrangement including one or more edging/roughing stands followed by a compact rolling group arranged transversely offset relative to the edging/roughing stands and connected to the edging/roughing stands through connecting roller conveyors and a transverse conveying unit.  The compact rolling group is composed of first and second universal stands or two-high stands and an intermediate edging stand arranged between the first and second stands.  In accordance with a predetermined cycle, preliminary sections arriving from a continuous casting plant are supplied directly without intermediate storage to the roll stand arrangement and are finish rolled successively in the compact rolling group into profiled rolled strands and are supplied, before or while the next following preliminary section enters the compact rolling group, to a cooling bed arranged laterally of the rolling line. 
2.  Description of the Related Art
In the known method described above, the cooling bed arranged following the compact rolling group has a conveying width which corresponds to the length of the finish rolled strand.  This arrangement makes it possible to continuously operate the roll stand arrangement in accordance with the cycle of the continuous casting plant if the output of the roll stand arrangement with respect to shaping the preliminary section into the finish rolled strand requires the same or a shorter period of time as is required by the continuous casting plant for producing a preliminary section. 
As the cross-section and the weight per unit of length of the finish rolled strand are being reduced, the output per unit of time of the roll stand arrangement becomes smaller and, when a certain section size is reached, the output of the roll stand arrangement is no longer sufficient for processing the production of the continuous casting plant within the given cycle; it is then necessary to carry out a complicated intermediate storage of the preliminary sections produced by the continuous casting plant.