Abstract: In the production process of hot-rolled wire rods, material (wire rod) position tracking is of great significance for accurately recording the production process parameters and achieving closed-loop control of wire rod production. Traditionally, dedicated hot metal detectors were installed to achieve material position tracking, which increases the cost and maintenance burden of production facilities. This paper uses the existing rolling mill current and radiation thermometer temperature measurements in production as signals for judging material arrival, achieving position tracking of the wire rods. It was found in the study that due to interference factors such as insulation cover obstruction and temperature measurement position deviation, using a fixed threshold algorithm will lead to misjudgment of position status when judging material arrival. To overcome the above problems, this paper designs an adaptive threshold algorithm based on signal jumps. In the initialization process, the initial position judgment threshold is obtained by normalizing the signal values; after median filtering of the original signal, the type of signal jump is determined. subsequently, the threshold is calculated based on Wien′s formula. Field test results demonstrate that the position tracking results obtained with this algorithm are accurate and reliable.