Thickness control of hot-rolled strips has become an important issue in recent years because of the need for improving the quality of the hot-rolled strip. In this study, a modifying method of rolling force set-up with consideration of spread was developed to improve the thickness uniformity at the finishing rolling units in hot rolling. Through the analysis of real production data it was found that the accuracy of the rolling force determined from the finishing mill set-up (FSU) model dominantly governed the thickness uniformity in rolled plates at the front. Based on this analysis , several examples were selected to calculate the spread of rolled plate using three dimensional rigid thermo-viscoplastic finite element program. FE analysis results were used to train the neural network system that can predict the spread hot-rolled plate and the rolling force was modified based on the predicted value of spread. The modified rolling forces were closer to the measured rolling force so it can be expected that the accuracy of thickness uniformity of hot-rolled plate will be improved.