A finite-capacity production scheduling procedure for a Belgian steel company

We present a multi-objective finite-capacity production scheduling algorithm for an integrated steel company located in Belgium. The two-stage optimization model takes various company-specific constraints into account and optimizes various, often conflicting, weighted objectives. A first machine assignment stage determines the routing of an individual order through the network while a second scheduling stage makes a detailed timetable for each operation for all orders. The procedure has been tested on randomly generated data instances sampled from real-life data from the steel company. We report promising computational results and illustrate the flexibility of the optimization model with respect to the various weights in the multi-objective function.