An Optimal Scheduling Algorithm for Reheating Furnace in Steel Production

Scheduling problem of reheating furnace in steel production is a combinatorial optimization problem of NP-hard feature.A mathematical model of furnace scheduling problem is formulated and a metaheuristic algorithm-genetic local search algorithm is presented for solving the problem.A simulation based on practical data shows that the proposed method is better than the method being used in practice and is suitable for practical production.