An Optimum-Tending Model for Combining Product Forecast, Existing Product Orders and Plant Capacity in a Steelworks

Abstract

This paper describes a scheduling methodology which integrates product forecast with existing product orders and available plant capacity in a real-time manner. It is shown that a combination of multiple objective math programming techniques and a developed heuristic create schedules which substantially reduce customer lead time and increase productivity.These integrated production planning and control strategies, developed for steel manufacture, work within the hierarchical computer configuration which computer process control-oriented steelworks utilize. The development of these strategies began with the design of a generalized steel plant simulator which modeled both the manufacturing complex and the computer information control hierarchy found in an actual steel production environment. Actual plant data were used for experimentation. Several American steel firms cooperated in the NSF supported research effort.