A new method to determine the total heat exchange factor was proposed for the prediction of billet temperature in a reheating furnace. This method employed the squared of the difference between measured and predicted temperatures as an objective function. The real billet temperature in a walking beam type reheating furnace with 19.75m of its effective length was directly measured by thermocouples. The present method was validated by showing that the predicted billet temperature was in a good agreement with the measured one.