It is well known that experience is playing a vital role in the selection of operating parameters in tandem cold rolling mills. In the present work, an attempt is made to develop a set-up model for tandem cold rolling mill to maximize the throughput. In the present work, power consumed is calculated and compared for various reduction schedules obtained by distributing the strip thicknesses in arithmetic, geometric, harmonic and quadratic series. Simulations are carried out for 6-stand and 5-stand tandem cold rolling mills with different sets of operational data reported by Roberts [Flat Processing of Steels, Marcel Dekker, New York, 1995]. It is found that power consumed is minimum for the reduction schedule obtained by distributing strip thicknesses in harmonic series and is reasonably in good agreement with the values obtained using the operational data reported by Roberts. A one-dimensional model presented by Suryanarayana [A set-up model for tandem cold rolling mill, M.Tech. Thesis, IIT, Bombay, 1998] is used to calculate the power in the present work and its predictions are compared with available experimental and numerical results and are presented in Appendix A. © 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.