Optimizing steel coil production schedules under continuous casting and hot rolling

Nelson Torres, Gus Greivel, Joshua Betz, Eduardo Moreno, Alexandra Newman and Brian Thomas

European Journal of Operational Research, 2024, vol. 314, issue 2, 496-508

Abstract: In continuous steel casting operations, heats of molten steel are alloyed and refined in ladles, continuously cast and cut into slabs, and hot-rolled into coils. We present a mixed-integer program that produces a daily casting schedule and that is solved using state-of-the-art software for a 100% direct-charge steel mill; two casters concurrently produce slabs, which are rolled into coils at a single hot rolling mill. This model minimizes penalties incurred by violating plant best practices while strictly adhering to safety and logical constraints to manage risk associated with manufacturing incidents. An efficient formulation, combined with variable reduction and cutting planes, expedites solutions for small instances containing hundreds of variables and thousands of constraints by factors of at least two or three (and sometimes even 100); instances an order of magnitude larger along both problem dimensions suggest solutions that reduce costs incurred using plant best practices by as much as 40%.

Keywords: Integer programming; Large-scale optimization; Scheduling; Steel production; Continuous casting (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ejores:v:314:y:2024:i:2:p:496-508

DOI: 10.1016/j.ejor.2023.10.005

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