An Improved Migrating Birds Optimization Algorithm for a Hybrid Flow Shop Scheduling within Steel Plants

Abstract

Steelmaking and the continuous-casting (SCC) scheduling problem is a realistic hybrid flow shop scheduling problem with continuous-casting production at the last stage. This study considers the SCC scheduling problem with diverse products, which is a vital and difficult problem in steel plants. To tackle this problem, this study first presents the mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) model to minimize the objective of makespan. Then, an improved migrating birds optimization algorithm (IMBO) is proposed to tackle this considered NP-hard problem. In the proposed IMBO, several improvements are employed to achieve the proper balance between exploration and exploitation. Specifically, a two-level decoding procedure is designed to achieve feasible solutions; the simulated annealing-based acceptance criterion is employed to ensure the diversity of the population and help the algorithm to escape from being trapped in local optima; a competitive mechanism is developed to emphasize exploitation capacity by searching around the most promising solution space. The computational experiments demonstrate that the proposed IMBO obtains competing performance and it outperforms seven other implemented algorithms in the comparative study.

Multi-Stage Multi-Product Production and Inventory Planning for Cold Rolling under Random Yield

“…The number of products is from 3 to 6. In general, changing the machine configurations does not have a large impact on the total cost with the exception of a few instances (such as when (U, M, J) = (6, 6, 5) and (U, M, J) = (6,6,6)). There appears to be a critical level of machine capacity below which the cost can blow up.…”

“…Even though our model does not explicitly consider decisions of order acceptance, our observation here implies that accepting too many orders can substantially increase the total cost if the required machine capacity is beyond a critical threshold. This can be observed when (U, M, J) takes the values (6,6,3) to (6,6,6). Producing a large number of cold rolling products requires more frequent switches and inventory.…”

“…Mula et al [5] offer a classification scheme for the literature on models for production and inventory planning under uncertainty. As a specific application, production planning and scheduling problems in steel manufacturing have also received significant attention (see, e.g., Han et al [6], Lv et al [7], Chen et al [8], Xu et al [9], Tang and Meng [10]).…”

Optimization of Steelmaking Energy Efficiency Scheduling Based on an Equipment Set Shutdown Strategy

“…A method to quantitatively describe the matching relationship between processing equipment in real production by using the processing weight assignment method of task executable equipment in the production scheduling plan of steelmaking and continuous casting was proposed . An improved migrating birds optimization (IMBO) algorithm to tackle the considered NP-hard problem was proposed . A new nondominated sorting genetic algorithm with an elite strategy (NSGA2)-based production scheduling method for complex steelmaking and continuous casting production process which consisted of multiple refining ways was presented .…”

“…7 An improved migrating birds optimization (IMBO) algorithm to tackle the considered NP-hard problem was proposed. 8 A new nondominated sorting genetic algorithm with an elite strategy (NSGA2)-based production scheduling method for complex steelmaking and continuous casting production process which consisted of multiple refining ways was presented. 9 An effective fruit fly optimization algorithm (FOA) to solve the steelmaking casting problem was studied.…”