Solving the Two-Crane Scheduling Problem in the Pre-Steelmaking Process

This research is motivated by the practical pre-steelmaking stage in large iron and steel companies, which have steady heavy demands for steelmaking production process. Our problem studied stage, consists of two steps that are needed each convertor before During step, a necessary transportation must be operated crane. In contrast to classical two-machine flowshop during both machines fixed, these transporting operations performed mounted, removeable cranes. scheduling two-crane sake minimizing last convertors’ completion time (makespan); is, finish among total operation cranes minimized. study was concerned with resolving interference between determining sequence loading how crane avoids other order let it complete its next first. A mixed integer linear programming (MILP) model developed represent problem, we further present computational complexity problem. The result implies our very difficult solve, computationally challenging solve model. special case provided, can optimally solved polynomial time. Furthermore, an evolutionary algorithm cuckoo search (CS) attempted obtain near-optimal solutions medium- large-scale problems. Finally, efficiency effectiveness methods were validated numerical results simulated instances as well real data from