Nowadays the steel market is becoming ever more competitive for European steelworks, especially as far as flat steel products are concerned. As such competition determines the price products, profit can be increased only by lowering production and commercial costs. Production yield can be significantly increased through an appropriate scheduling of the semi-manufactured products among the available sub-processes, to ensure that customers’ orders are timely completed, resources are optimally exploited, and delays are minimized. Therefore, an ever-increasing attention is paid toward production optimization through efficient scheduling strategies in the scientific and industrial communities. This paper proposes a hybrid approach to improve the flexibility of production scheduling in steelworks producing flat steel products. Such approach combines three methods holding different scopes and modelling different aspects: an auction-based multi-agent system is applied to face production uncertainties, multi-objective mixed-integer linear programming is used for global optimal scheduling of resources under steady conditions, while a continuous flow model copes with long-term production scheduling. According to the obtained simulation results, the integration and combination of these three approaches allow scheduling production in a flexible way by providing the capability to adapt to different production conditions.

中文翻译：

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一种提高扁钢行业生产调度灵活性的混合方法

如今，钢铁市场对欧洲钢铁厂的竞争越来越激烈，尤其是在扁钢产品方面。由于这种竞争决定了产品的价格，只有降低生产和商业成本才能增加利润。通过对可用子流程中的半成品进行适当的调度，可以显着提高生产良率，确保客户订单及时完成，资源得到优化利用，延迟最小化。因此，科学界和工业界越来越关注通过有效的调度策略来优化生产。本文提出了一种混合方法来提高生产扁钢产品的钢厂生产调度的灵活性。这种方法结合了三种不同范围和不同方面的建模方法：基于拍卖的多智能体系统用于面对生产不确定性，多目标混合整数线性规划用于在稳态条件下进行资源全局优化调度，而连续流模型应对长期生产调度。根据获得的模拟结果，这三种方法的集成和组合通过提供适应不同生产条件的能力，可以灵活地安排生产。多目标混合整数线性规划用于稳态条件下资源的全局最优调度，而连续流模型则应对长期生产调度。根据获得的模拟结果，这三种方法的集成和组合通过提供适应不同生产条件的能力，可以灵活地安排生产。多目标混合整数线性规划用于稳态条件下资源的全局最优调度，而连续流模型则应对长期生产调度。根据获得的模拟结果，这三种方法的集成和组合通过提供适应不同生产条件的能力，可以灵活地安排生产。