Two-Stage Method and Application for Molten Iron Scheduling Problem between Iron-Making Plants and Steel-Making Plants

Hui, Huang; Chai, Tianyou; Luo, Xiaochuan; Zheng, Binglin; Wu, Hong

doi:10.3182/20110828-6-it-1002.01373

Cited by 9 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…Use of Coordinator The use of algorithms that help to consolidate the programming of a steel plant invites to think about an automation of the process. However, most steel plants operate in a hybrid way, in which a master coordinator is in charge of managing the program 81,140) and helping it to make decisions, particularly when defining manufacturing priorities, forecasting the arrival of raw materials and optimizing waiting times. This means that some of the variables present in various algorithms have to be determined by the coordinator.…”

Section: Contingenciesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Scheduling in Continuous Steelmaking Casting: A Systematic Review

et al. 2020

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The converter furnace and the continuous casting are the most important stages in steel production. Modern integrated processes directly connect the converter furnaces and the continuous casting machines with a flow of molten metal, and the steel is manufactured synchronously between the various machines. Starting from the traditional handmade programs for the management of these processes, during the last two decades there has been a notable increase in studies and publications in this field, trying to formulate scheduling in a rational and automatic way. The process has been approached for years through the development of both physical and operational research models, many of them theoretically. The main purpose of this study is to present a critical and in-depth evaluation of the previous studies, so that the state of the art of scheduling in steelworks can be evaluated. An approach based on a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) has been used, trying to search, evaluate, synthesize and analyze all the relevant studies for this specific field. As a result, the conclusions of the various analyses are presented and a study route is proposed for the design of the optimal planning methodology in the steelworks.

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Section: Contingenciesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Scheduling in Continuous Steelmaking Casting: A Systematic Review

et al. 2020

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“…In the wider area of steel production, various related problems have been reported in the literature. The molten iron allocation problem, modeled as a parallel machine scheduling problem (Tang, Wang, & Liu, 2007) and the molten iron scheduling problem, modeled as a flow shop problem (Huang, Chai, Luo, Zheng, & Wang, 2011;Li, Pan, & Duan, 2016), deal with assignments of torpedoes to machines. Various torpedo scheduling problems are defined for planning the transport of hot metal with the focus on vehicle routing across a network of rails, and the objective is to minimize transportation times (Kikuchi, Konishi, & Imai, 2008;Deng, Inoue, & Kawakami, 2011;Liu & Wang, 2015).…”

Section: Related Problems In Steel Productionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Solving the Torpedo Scheduling Problem

Geiger¹,

Kletzander²,

Musliu³

2019

jair

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The article presents a solution approach for the Torpedo Scheduling Problem, an operational planning problem found in steel production. The problem consists of the integrated scheduling and routing of torpedo cars, i. e. steel transporting vehicles, from a blast furnace to steel converters. In the continuous metallurgic transformation of iron into steel, the discrete transportation step of molten iron must be planned with considerable care in order to ensure a continuous material flow. The problem is solved by a Simulated Annealing algorithm, coupled with an approach of reducing the set of feasible material assignments. The latter is based on logical reductions and lower bound calculations on the number of torpedo cars. Experimental investigations are performed on a larger number of problem instances, which stem from the 2016 implementation challenge of the Association of Constraint Programming (ACP). Our approach was ranked first (joint first place) in the 2016 ACP challenge and found optimal solutions for all used instances in this challenge.

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“…& Musliu, 2017) are incomplete and thus cannot prove optimality of an instance, unless the lower bound of the objective is the optimal value. Different aspects on the torpedo scheduling problem have been studied in the literature: the routing of torpedoes through the rail network while minimizing the transportation time of the hot metal (Deng, Inoue, & Kawakami, 2011;Kikuchi, Konishi, & Imai, 2008;Liu & Wang, 2015), the molten iron allocation problem (Tang, Wang, & Liu, 2007), the molten scheduling problem (Huang, Chai, Luo, Zheng, & Wang, 2011;Li, Pan, & Duan, 2016), and the locomotive scheduling problem . All those works use different solution methods such as local search, mixed integer programming, and column generation, but none use Logic-based Benders Decomposition (Hooker & Ottosson, 2003) and Constraint Programming (CP) as we do in the present paper.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Optimal Torpedo Scheduling

Goldwaser¹,

Schutt²

2018

jair

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We consider the torpedo scheduling problem in steel production, which is concerned with the transport of hot metal from a blast furnace to an oxygen converter. A schedule must satisfy, amongst other considerations, resource capacity constraints along the path and the locations traversed as well as the sulfur level of the hot metal. The goal is first to minimize the number of torpedo cars used during the planning horizon and second to minimize the time spent desulfurizing the hot metal. We propose an exact solution method based on Logic based Benders Decomposition using Mixed-Integer and Constraint Programming, which optimally solves and proves, for the first time, the optimality of all instances from the ACP Challenge 2016 within 10 minutes. In addition, we adapted our method to handle large-scale instances and instances with a more general rail network. This adaptation optimally solved all challenge instances within one minute and was able to solve instances of up to 100,000 hot metal pickups.

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Two-Stage Method and Application for Molten Iron Scheduling Problem between Iron-Making Plants and Steel-Making Plants

Cited by 9 publications

References 5 publications

Scheduling in Continuous Steelmaking Casting: A Systematic Review

Scheduling in Continuous Steelmaking Casting: A Systematic Review

Solving the Torpedo Scheduling Problem

Optimal Torpedo Scheduling

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