2016 Integrated Sequencing and Scheduling in Coil Coating.pdfVIP

MANAGEMENT SCIENCE informs? Vol. 57, No. 4, April 2011, pp. 647–666 doi 10.1287/mnsc.1100.1302 issn 0025-1909 eissn 1526-5501 11 5704 0647 ? 2011 INFORMS Integrated Sequencing and Scheduling in Coil Coating Wiebke H?hn, Felix G. K?nig, Rolf H. M?hring Institut für Mathematik, Technische Universit?t Berlin, 10623 Berlin, Germany hoehn@math.tu-berlin.de, fkoenig@math.tu-berlin.de, rolf.moehring@tu-berlin.de Marco E. Lübbecke Department of Operations Research, RWTH Aachen University, 52056 Aachen, Germany, marco.luebbecke@rwth-aachen.de We consider a complex planning problem in integrated steel production. A sequence of coils of sheet metal needs to be color coated in consecutive stages. Different coil geometries and changes of colors necessitate time-consuming setup work. In most coating stages one can choose between two parallel color tanks. This can either reduce the number of setups needed or enable setups concurrent with production. A production plan comprises the sequencing of coils and the scheduling of color tanks and setup work. The aim is to minimize the makespan for a given set of coils. We present an optimization model for this integrated sequencing and schedul- ing problem. A core component is a graph theoretical model for concurrent setup scheduling. It is instrumental for building a fast heuristic that is embedded into a genetic algorithm to solve the sequencing problem. The quality of our solutions is evaluated via an integer program based on a combinatorial relaxation, showing that our solutions are within 10% of the optimum. Our algorithm is implemented at Salzgitter Flachstahl GmbH, a major German steel producer. This has led to an average reduction in makespan by over 13% and has greatly exceeded expectations. Key words : sequencing; scheduling; integrated steel production; coil coating; 2-union graphs; independent set; branch-and-price History : Received March 12, 2010; accepted November 17, 2010, by Dimitris Ber