A Paradigm for the Scheduling of a Continuous Walking Beam Reheat Furnace Using a Modified Genetic Algorithm

The paper discusses the application of a paradigm for creating scheduling systems for steel reheating furnaces. The proposed paradigm utilizes a modified version of a Genetic Algorithm (GA) to optimize such schedules via new ways of realizing the crossover and mutation operations. The work was conducted in collaboration with the Thrybergh Combination Mill owned by CORUS- Sheffield (UK). The outcome of this research work is a novel scheduling system which links together the scheduling and furnace controls and is also able to accept new and already established mill heuristics. The proposed methodology is ‘flexible’ as well as ‘generic’ as it can be augmented easily in order to suit other industrial set-ups.