Simulation-based Solution for Multi-crane Dynamic Scheduling in Steelmaking Shop

A simulation-based solution under the rolling scheduling strategy was provided for a multi-crane scheduling problem deriving from the steelmaking shop. The objective function of the model is to minimize the temporal deviation of the crane scheduling from the process scheduling and the workloads of the cranes. The constraints feature the non-interference constraints between cranes, the station capacity constraint and the constraints caused by varied initial conditions. The model was solved by a simulation-based heuristic. The simulation experiments were conducted based on a twin-crane scheduling instance in a steelmaking shop. The results show that the crane scheduling solution can maintain the stability of the production schedule. In addition, it can also balance and reduce the workloads of the cranes. In the rolling scheduling strategy, the solution obtained by the proposed heuristic method can reach, at most, 96.3% of the optimal one in optimization performance. Compared with the real-time rule scheduling method employed in the production field, the optimization performance was improved by 26.4% with the proposed heuristic method under the rolling scheduling strategy. © 2020, Editorial Department of Journal of Northeastern University. All right reserved.