MasDISPO_xt: Annealing Furnace Planning inside the Supply Chain of Steel Production

Abstract

The production of steel normally constitutes the inception of many Supply Chains in different areas of industry. Therefore, steel manufacturing companies are strongly affected by bull whip effects and other unpredictable influences along their production chains. In the course of these integrated operations, making the right decision at a certain stage can be the difference between earning or losing a great benefit. Improving their operational efficiency is required to keep a competitive position on the market. Therefore, flexible planning and scheduling systems are needed to support these processes, which are based on considerable amounts of data, hardly processable manually anymore. MasDISPO_xt is an agent-based generic online planning and scheduling system for the observation on MES-level of the complete Supply Chain of Saarstahl AG, a globally respected steel manufacturer. This paper concentrates on the planning of the annealing furnaces as a representative example of the rough and detailed planning required in such an environment. The allocation of available capacities of annealing furnaces including alternatives to accepted orders is based on Simulated Trading to produce an evenly distributed rough planning regarding flexibility. As representative for the detailed planning, the solution for the batch-type annealing furnace is explained in detail.