The grinding process is an essential part of iron and steel smelting. Due to the changeable ore source and the complex dynamic characteristics of the process, the grinding particle size often cannot meet the requirements, resulting in an increase in process energy and material consumption, as well as reworking. In response to the above problems, the following goal was achieved through this study: a collaborative optimization problem for minimization of the grinding particle size error, process water, amountand electricity consumption has been established, which yields the grinding particle size in real time through the use of a neural network. In order to improve the optimization performance, an enhanced Harris hawks optimization (EHHO) algorithm has been developed. EHHO strengthens the team cooperation between individuals in the algorithm initialization phase and location update phase, as well as introduces an attenuation factor in the search phase to improve the stability and accuracy of the algorithm. The effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated through the use of some benchmark functions and an industrial grinding process. The results show that the enhanced Harris hawks optimization algorithm has better optimization accuracy and generalizability; furthermore, it can be effectively applied to the collaborative optimization of grinding process.