Progress of research on steelmaking‒continuous casting production scheduling

Production scheduling is one of the key technologies in steel manufacturing process. It plays a significant role in reducing the production cost and improving the production efficiency of iron and steel enterprises. In recent years, with the rapid development of intelligent steel-manufacturing technology, production scheduling has attracted increasing attention and become a research hotspot in the field of iron and steel metallurgy. The process of production scheduling in the process of steelmaking‒continuous casting was summarized and discussed through reviews of previous researches, and the characteristics and application scopes of various methods were compared and classified. Typical cases of the computer-aided scheduling system in domestic and overseas steelmaking plants were discussed, and the characteristics of each system were studied and analyzed comparatively. On the basis of the previous studies, forward-looking strategies and a methodology of production scheduling were proposed for the future study of steelmaking‒continuous casting process. For static scheduling, a new concept “rules + algorithm” was proposed, and a scheduling model construction method based on the production mode optimization of a steel mill was developed for a domestic special-steelmaking plant as a case study. For dynamic scheduling, multi-process collaboration was suggested, and a collaborative control method based on multi-agent was proposed. This method was developed for multi-process control, quality control, and scheduling control of the steelmaking-continuous casting process. An optimized and effective method for modeling and solving is one of the important means to solve the production-scheduling problem, aiming at improving the levels of setting up production plan and the feasibility of production planning. Meanwhile proposed method for modeling and solving can strengthen the on-site real-time control in steel mills and is of great significance to realize stable, orderly, and continuous operation in steelmaking-continuous casting process.