A finite-capacity production scheduling procedure for a Belgian steel company

Abstract

We present a multi-objective finite-capacity production scheduling algorithm for an integrated steel company located in Belgium. The two-stage optimization model takes various company-specific constraints into account and optimizes various, often conflicting, weighted objectives. A first machine assignment stage determines the routing of an individual order through the network while a second scheduling stage makes a detailed timetable for each operation for all orders. The procedure has been tested on randomly generated data instances sampled from real-life data from the steel company. We report promising computational results and illustrate the flexibility of the optimization model with respect to the various weights in the multi-objective function.

Keywords:

• Master production scheduling
• Manufacturing planning and control
• Scheduling/sequencing

Acknowledgements

We thank line scheduling specialists Krist Blomme and Alain Zegers of Arcelor Ghent Systems and Models department for drawing our attention to the challenging nature of the production scheduling project and for permission to use project data. We are also grateful to Frederik Fransoo (specialist in production scheduling, Arcelor Ghent Systems and Models) for providing information about the data and for numerous conversations regarding the construction of new fictitious data that reflect real-life characteristics of the production scheduling environment.