Scheduling of the batch annealing process — deterministic case

This study addresses the short-term scheduling problem for the batch annealing process in the heat treatment of steel coils. Scheduling in the batch annealing process has the following objective: determine the optimal movement plan for satisfying high utilization of shared equipment (a crane, furnaces, and coolers) among parallel bases. This process is a multipurpose batch plant which may contain re-entrant flows in the batch annealing cycles …