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Light Metals 2005 Edited by Halvor Kvande TMS (The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society), 2005

Scheduling Optimization for Aluminum Smelter Casthouses

Neil Freeman1 Jeffrey

, D. Kelly2 , Wei Zhang3 and John L. Mann4
1
Honeywell Process Solutions, Victoria Park, Australia.
2
Honeywell Process Solutions, Toronto, Canada.
3
Honeywell Process Solutions, Wiesbaden, Germany
4
Honeywell Process Solutions, Toronto, Canada.

Keywords: open-shop, closed-shop, MRP, lot-sizing, logistics, mixed integer linear programming

Abstract
Scheduling of cast house operations is difficult especially for multi-
product casting operations. The cast house operations are generally
batch oriented where as the pot line operations continuously
produce hot metal which must be processed. This results in
difficulties coordinating the pot line operations with the cast house
operations, the net effect being sub optimal scheduling.
New technologies incorporating Mixed Integer Linear Programming
are able to not only solve this closed-shop scheduling problem but
also optimize this from both a logistics and quality perspective to
minimize costs and maximize profit.
There are considerable gains to be realized by optimally scheduling
the flow of hot metal from reduction lines through the casthouse,
particularly for multi-product casting operations. These gains will
come from work flow improvements as well as melt loss
minimization, pot line superheat re-use, product quality
enhancements and stock holding reductions.
Traditionally, the planning of aluminum smelter casthouses which
balances the supply of hot-metal feedstock to the casthouses from
the pot-lines and the demand of alloyed product stocks from the
casthouses to the stock-pads for shipment is performed by material
requirements planning systems ( MRP or MRP/II) available from
enterprise resource planning (ERP) software vendors such as SAP,
JD Edwards or Baan. Though these tools can help significantly in
the longer term big-bucket planning (or balancing) of forecasted
(spot or retail) and firm (contract or wholesale) sales orders with
the requirements of alumina and supporting materials and utilities
such as carbon and electrical power, they are not suitable for
shorter-term small bucket scheduling of production found in the
casthouses [2] given their lack of production details mainly their
inability to model the equipment availabilities and capacities. This
limitation of MRP when extrapolated outside its region of applicability
is well known [4] and to help remedy these issues, finite resource
scheduling (FRS) systems are being designed and developed
which is the focus of this article.

This paper discusses the problem, solution technology and benefits

to be gained from scheduling optimization. The fine points of this
problem are described further in the main body of this article as
well as the presentation of an illustrative example.
Introduction
The basic premise of casthouse scheduling centers around what
are known as closed-shops or lot-sizing, sequencing and scheduling
problems [1, 2]. These types of problems involve the simultaneous
management of quantity and logic decision variables such as
charge or batch-sizes and operating-modes on process units
where logic also includes timing or timetable details such as due-
dates or processing-time. They contrast open-shop, job-shop or
even project-shop scheduling problems which deal almost
exclusively with the logic details of satisfying jobs, orders or
projects. They schedule renewable resources such as equipment
without managing the non-renewable resources and hence assume
that the sizing details are provided exogenously (ie, either given or
supplied by some planning system). In essence, open shops are a
subset of closed shops. The casting of aluminum into bulk
geometries of ingots, billets and slabs as the primary source of
refined aluminum alloys to secondary manufacturers of finished
aluminum alloy products, on the surface looks like an open-shop
but it is in fact a closed-shop problem. The primary reason it must
be optimized in the context of a closed-shop system is due to the
fact that the casting is complicated by the push of hot-metal
aluminum being received by the pot-lines and the pull of hot metal
alloy requirements from primary customer sales. This also relates
to the issues of make-to-stock and make-to-order [3] and the
concepts of batch splitting and merging.
The related issue of closed-shop versus open-shop is that of make-
to-order and make-to-stock production [3]. When open-shop
problems are formulated and solved, it is assumed that batch,
order, job or project splitting and merging have already been
performed by some higher-level planning system. Though this may
be true from an organizational and work-flow perspective,
inefficiencies, over-optimizations and even infeasibilities in the
plans almost always exist. In closed-shop solutions, the lot, batch
or charge-sizing details of the problem are properly managed inside
one optimizer and hence cost-effective trade-offs can be made
when certain supply and/or demand-orders need to be merged or
split with other orders of similar timing and processing.
This splitting and merging of orders can be a powerful degree of
freedom or handle when balancing customer requirements with
production restrictions.
The Problem
Introduction
The aluminum smelting process can be considered to comprise
three main operations; anode production (producing carbon anodes
for reduction, reduction (reducing alumina via electrolysis to
produce hot metal aluminum) and cast house (alloying and casting
of the aluminum to produce products for sale). The reduction is a
continuous process of making hot metal, whereas the cast house
process is a batch operation.Both of these areas should work
together to maximize the potential revenue that can be generated
from the produced aluminium.This requires careful planning and
scheduling as shown schematically in figure 1.

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INPUTS OUTPUTS 750C. Thus there is considerable superheat available for melting
Provisional Pots Final Pots
Tapping Schedule Tapping Schedule
of scrap or alloying elements providing that the metal can be
P F
C

Pot
O
Q
L
A
u
R
A
Pots Allocated loaded into the furnaces quickly.
S
L D N to Ladles
Assays I L
E
A
Q
E
Melt loss minimization - Hot metal is subject to oxidation resulting
N C
R Ladles Allocated
Pot E
S
S E
S
S to Furnaces in a melt loss. Minimizing the time from pot tapping to casting will
Weights
Furnaces Allocated reduce the exposure time of the hot metal and hence minimize the
scrap
Casthouse Scheduling
to Casters
melt loss.
Assays
Casters Allocated
Constraints Optimization to Orders Optimization of High and Low purity hot metal from the Pot
scrap • Maintenance • • Minimum costs
Weights Tapping Routes •
Correct assays Furnace Scrap lines - Metal in the pots can become contaminated with iron or
• Personnel • Minimize blend Allocations

Alloy Materials
• etc. time other impurities, limiting its use to low quality alloys. Whereas, high
Furnaces Alloy
Allocations purity metal can be sold at a premium. The use of high purity metal
for low quality alloys essentially results in the smelter 'giving away'
PLANNING potential revenue. Optimized scheduling will ensure that there is
Casting Orders the minimum 'give away' by allocating scheduling orders to
customers
12 Weeks
Other
maximize the use of the high purity metal.
Orders rolling
schedule
Maximize use of cast house capacity - In large complex cast
Figure 1. Planning and Schematic Schematic house furnaces may be maintained at temperature, with an
associated energy cost, to provide a safety buffer. Optimal
The plan examines the orders that are required to be fulfilled and scheduling will facilitate a reduction in this safety buffer minimizing
assigns them to suitable time buckets such as monthly or weekly. energy costs.
This should account for generalized operational, material and Optimize pot tapping operations - There is flexibility in pot
equipment constraints to provide a feasible plan. The feasible plan tapping operations which if correctly utilized can maximize the
is then converted by scheduling to produce a time sequenced set production of high purity metal.
of operational requirements for sizing, assignment, sequencing Maximize use of metal transportation facilities - Optimal
and timing within a specified time horizon such as daily. The scheduling will minimize transportation delays by ensuring that the
resultant schedule being operational tasks to be commenced and processes are ready for receipt of the metal and similarly that pot
completed at specified times. tapping is able to proceed as scheduled

Scheduling Requirements These are just some examples of the anticipated benefit areas.
The pot lines are a continuous process that makes hot metal of Total benefits from optimized scheduling can exceed millions of
varying quality (generally iron contamination) which must be dollars per annum.
utilized. However there are a number of batch processes (pot
tapping, ladle transport, furnace mixing and casting) that need to The Solution
be co-ordinated in order to make use of this metal. From a
scheduling perspective it is necessary to ensure that all the The scheduling requirements can be represented schematically as
equipment is available to make use of the metal being produced in figure 2.
by the pots and minimizing the delays associated with using the Individual
CellMetal
hot metal (logistics). Further the potential value of the metal being
produced by the pots should be maximized (quality). That is Pot Tapping
ensuring that high quality metal is used for alloy types that require Optimization

this purity thus minimizing purity 'give away' HP Metal NP Metal

Availability Availability

In the operations where there are multiple products with multiple

grades, multiple furnaces and casting routes, multiple pot lines and Hot Metal
even multiple furnaces then the number of possibilities can be very HP & NP Metal HP Metal
Requests
schedule
large. From a scheduling terminology perspective these are termed Expected Requests
Metal Supply
scheduling
decision variables and examples have been found where the Production
Orders
Casthouse
scheduling
NP Metal
Requests Hot Metal

number of decision variables is in the thousands. This means that Scheduled

Supply
schedule
Maintenance
Production
it is very difficult for a human to determine an optimal schedule and schedule
Orders

most operations rely on a schedule that works which is doubtless
somewhat far from an optimized schedule.
The Benefits
The achievement of a schedule that works is a noble aim however
there are significant benefits that could be achieved through
optimizing the schedule. That is through reworking the schedule to
maximize the revenue (or minimize the costs) associated with this
section of the smelter. There are a number of areas with the
potential for significant benefits, these include:
Maximize use of superheated pots - Hot metal tapped from the
pots is around 950C, while casting temperatures should be around
Figure 2. Scheduling Requirements Representation
The whole process being very iterative, however it is possible to
break this down into three main areas: Metal supply scheduling -
Generate a pot tapping schedule outlining when and where to tap
High Purity (HP) and Normal Purity (NP) ladles from the pot lines
to be supplied to Cast-houses. Pot tapping optimization - Consider
all the pots to be tapped during a shift and identify groups for
tapping that result in all the cells being used to produce HP and
NP hot metal while maximising the amount of HP hot metal. Cast
house scheduling - Coordinating operations of the furnaces and
the casters to fill casting orders, this is the basis of the illustrative
example.

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Casthouse Scheduling Model
Introduction
The approach used to model the complex production planning
and scheduling problem for aluminum smelter casting is central
to being able to mathematically translate the production
optimization problem into a problem that can be formulated and
solved using mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) [5].
Problems involving both quantity and logic variables and
constraints are what are called production logistics problems. It
should be mentioned that a complementary problem involving
quantity and quality details is called the production quality
problem [6] with a focus on planning inside the process industries
such as oil-refining. The fundamental building blocks of production
modeling are perimeters, pools, continuous processes, batch
processes and ports. Perimeters are simply the sources and
sinks of the production boundaries and used to model the supply
and demand of feedstocks and product stocks. Pools are used
to represent buffers, hold-ups, inventories and accumulations
found in the plant. Continuous-processes model processes which
have no internal hold-up and operate continuously when set-up
over a campaign or run. They are characterized by a variable
charge-size or throughput rate (quantity per time-period) and can
have any number of inlet and outlet streams (ie, convergent and
divergent processes) with production yields or bill-of-material
proportions attached. Batch-processes are similar to continuous-
processes except that they do have internal hold-up and are
characterized by a variable batch-size (quantity per batch or cycle-
time) but with a fixed cycle; a continuous-process can be
modeled as a batch process with a cycle-time of 1 time-period. A
key modeling construct is inlet and outlet ports. Ports support the
flow interfaces between perimeters, pools and processes. Port-to-
port moves, routes, transfers or streams are used to build the
production connectivity or network. Each port-to-port move has a
quantity flow size capacity attached as well as a logic variable to
indicate whether it is flowing or not flowing called a disjunctive
variable because it is an either-or variable.
Another important modeling aspect is the difference between the
physical (structural) and functional (behavior) networks. The
physical network or what we call the plant substructure describes
the plant equipment and its connectivity ie, the relationship
between the up and downstream units similar to a piping and
instrumentation diagram (P&ID). The functional network or the
process substructure describes the process material or stock
flow and the precedence relationship between up and downstream
operations similar to a process flow diagram (PFD). Together
these two substructures generate the production superstructure
or network and forms the underlying directed graph or digraph of
the production similar to disjunctive graphs found in open-shop
scheduling theory [7]. It is used to describe the combined
production's capacity and connectivity together generating a
picture of the production's capability.
Illustrative Model
Figure 3 shows an overview of a small but representative
production superstructure found inside an aluminum smelter
casthouse. It has three re-melt/holding furnaces and one direct
chilled caster each with several operations it can perform over
the scheduling time-horizon. The subsections to follow highlight
each stage or level of the production.
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1-Caster
3-Furnaces
AlloyGroup1Size1
AlloyGroup1
AlloyGroup2
AlloyGroup1Size2
AlloyGroup3
WashCast
High-Purity
Low-Purity
scrap
Figure 3. Production superstructure model
Supply of Low and High-Purity Hot-metal (Perimeter-Outlet-Port)
The pushed supply of hot or molten aluminum metal arrives from
a reduction pot-line which is a collection of pots or cells via
crucibles or ladles. The hot-metal is known as a non-renewable
resource given that once it is used, consumed or produced it
cannot be converted back to its original form; examples of non-
renewable resources are feedstocks, intermediate stocks and
product stocks. The pots are continuously fed alumina, and
through a reduction process consuming tremendous amounts of
electrical energy, precipitate in the bottom of the pot hot or molten
metal. The pots are typically tapped once per day yielding one to
two metric tons of hot-metal by attaching a crucible to one side of
the pot via a gantry crane. These crucibles are then transported
using dedicated trucks to the casthouse where they are poured
into the appropriate furnace. The quality of the hot-metal is
characterized generally into two types of high and low-purity
based on the amount of contaminants such as silicon and iron.
At any given time a pot's hot-metal content is rather unpredictable
and not until an assay is performed before tapping can the hot-
metal be classified as either low or high-purity feedstock although
this occurs after two to six pots have been tapped into one
crucibles. In practice, there can be several different pot-lines
feeding one or more casthouses within the same plant so that
the requirements for hot-metal can be satisfied from diverse
sources and this must be appropriately managed and coordinated.
The production model presented here assumes there is only one
source of hot-metal with a lower and upper bound on the
availability of both low and high-purity feedstock requirements.
For this production model it is assumed that the supply of hot
metal is non-contiguous (or non-consecutive) order fulfillment
(NCOF). This type of supply-order fulfillment has a release and
due date for the availability of hot-metal over the scheduling
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horizon. The release-date specifies the earliest time that the
production can consume the hot-metal and the due-date specifies
the last date when it is available. Production can flow-in hot
metal quantities over the release and due-date whenever required
and must not exceed the upper bound and it must use no less
than the lower bound. The flowrate at which it can receive or be
delivered hot-metal is specified by a hydraulic capacity on the
outlet-port of the perimeter. There are three perimeter-outlet-port
production objects shown in Figure 3 with the third one (unlabeled)
being a dummy or hypothetical supply source for a zero amount of
WashCast material to be further explained in the immediate
subsection to follow. There can also be a supply of scrap metal
generated by cleaning (repetitive), preventive and corrective
maintenance activities etc. which can be fed in when required and
would need another perimeter-outlet-port object to be configured
in the model.
Re-Melt/Holding Furnaces (Pools)
As shown in Figure 3, there are three physical furnaces modeled
as pool-units each having four operations of AlloyGroup1,
AlloyGroup2, AlloyGroup3 and WashCast. The furnace is modeled
as a pool given that it can accumulate hot-metal, at least in the
short-term, with any remaining inventory labeled as a heel.
The furnace has three sub-operations called filling, holding and
drawing. The filling sub-operation or operative describes the
furnace when it is being charged or allowing flow-in with either low
or high-purity hot-metal depending on the unit-operation selected.
When filling, a draw to the downstream caster cannot occur and
visa-versa. The drawing or dropping operation describes the
furnace when it allows flow-out to the caster. The holding operative
lies in-between the filling and drawing sub operations and provides
enough delay to add the component stock alloying materials (such
as magnesium) within pre-specified recipe amounts or proportions
conditional on the heel and hot metal supply qualities. It also
allows enough time for the component stock alloys to mix and
stabilize inside the furnace as well as re-melting any scrap
additions.
The four operations mentioned, except for the WashCast, are
aggregated or grouped alloy-grade classifications. Although the
casthouse can produce hundreds of different individual alloy
grades from each furnace, due to optimization of solvency issues,
grades are strategically set into groups or families whereby grades
within a group have similar start-up, shut-down and switch-over
event logic requirements [ 8]. This is not to say that alloy-grades
within an alloy-group do not have important sequence-dependent
change-over requirements that need to be respected, only that
from the perspective of our production logistics decision-making of
filling, holding and drawing a furnace with the appropriate quantity
(and quality) of hot-metal, the switch-over details are relegated to
a post-optimization or secondary decision-support tool.
In order to model the filling, holding and drawing sub-operations,
special logic constraints are required and are attached to the pool
unit-operation object. The first is called the fill-to-full quantity
restriction which will disallow drawing or flow-out of the furnace
until the furnace inventory is above the fill-to-full quantity
specification somewhere in between the lower and upper furnace
capacity but closer to the upper capacity limit. Symmetrically there
is also a draw-to-empty quantity which will not allow hot metal fills
until the accumulation in the furnace is below a certain amount
typically set below the fill-to-full quantity and above or
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equal to the lower hold-up size. The holding time is enforced
through a logic constraint known as the lower and upper fill-draw
delay. The lower bound is a time in hours (or relative-time) which
upon the last fill into the furnace it will not allow draws out. The
upper limit is useful for perishable stocks for example whereby
there must be a draw sometime before the upper bound.
That said, there can be a need to specify an upper fill-draw-delay
given the heat energy requirements necessary to keep the
aluminum molten. There can also be a draw-draw-delay which for
multiple drops to a caster from one furnace can be used to apply
an additional hold-time between drops.
The WashCast operation for each furnace is the cleaning or
repetitive maintenance operation of the furnace whenever an alloy-
group switch-over occurs. The operating rules or procedures
around this are important to describe in a little more resolution. If
a particular furnace-unit currently in operation AlloyGroup2 is
required to switch to AlloyGroup1 due to a near term demand-
order of an alloy-grade made from hot-metal produced when the
furnace is operating AlloyGroup1, a WashCast operation must be
initiated to remove the heel of hot-metal before the AlloyGroup1
can be started-up. This is accomplished by imposing a special
logic constraint called start-up-when-empty that says that an alloy-
group operation cannot start-up unless the hold-up in the furnace
is zero tonnes (note that this is usually below the operating lower
bound on the furnace). Equally well, there is a shut-down-when-
empty for the WashCast operation which says that upon shut-down
of the WashCast operation the inventory in the furnace must be
zero or some user-entered quantity. The washings of hot-metal
must be disposed of somehow and this is via a WashCast operation
on the caster also shown in Figure 3.
Direct-Chilled Caster (Both Continuous and Batch-Processes)
The casting operation is modeled as an upstream continuous
process of receiving the hot-metal alloy from the furnaces (though
only one furnace can feed one caster at a time) and multiple batch
processes representing the mold sizes of the cast logs being
produced as shown in Figure 3. The seven bolded rectangles are
the batch-process unit operations. It is possible to model the caster
without breaking it into two types of processes but this incurs more
binary or logic variables in the model than the approach taken
here. Most casters are of the direct-chilled type which implies a
certain controlled procedure for cooling and forming the hot-metal
alloy in logs of varying geometry and size where the log length
can also be a variable. After the caster, there can be a
homogenization or treating operation and then a sawing operation
producing log lengths according to a specific customer order.
Scrap or trim-loss after sawing is stock-piled and is recycled back
as scrap to the re-melt furnaces to be re-injected and cast into a
salable product sometime into the future.
The system presented in Figure 3 has only two sizes of cast each
with varying amounts of hot-metal requirements. This implies that
each size has its own batch-size upper and lower quantity
specifications. A typical cycle-time for a caster is between 2 to 4-
hours and this is modeled as a simple time-delay between the
filling and drawing of aluminum. The batch-process is modeled
with a start-to-fill-delay and start-to-draw-delay in relative time from
the start-up of the batch operation. This tells the logistics scheduling
optimizer when to flow-in feed material and when to flow-out
product material during the operation of the batch.
Another salient side logic constraint associated with the caster and
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its variable sizes is the operation-group shut-down lower (and
upper) down-time. When there is a caster size change from say
size 150mm to 300mm the caster must be forced into a down-time
in order to properly set-up or re-tool the unit. This is implemented
as a sequence-independent change-over [9, 10]. In this model
there are two sizes and two operation-groups called Size1 and
Size2. Whenever any unit-operation in Size1 shuts down and
then afterward a unit-operation in Size2 starts-up sometime in
the immediate future a down-time delay is invoked on the
physical unit of relative-time specified by the user.
Typically sequence-independent down-times for casters are on
the order of 2 to 8-hours depending on the mold size and
available re-tooling facilities. It should be mentioned that this
logic constraint is very similar to the fill-draw-delay where a fill
sub operation relates to the operation in a particular group and
the draw sub-operation relates to any operation not within the group.
Demand of Aluminum Alloy-Grades (Inlet-Port-Perimeter)
After the caster there can be other downstream operations. In
order to balance the scope, complexity and accuracy of the
production model with its tractability (ie, its likelihood of solving
in reasonable time), it is assumed that there are no capacity
bottlenecks with the homogenization and sawing unit operations.
As such, a fixed delay or offset to the demand-order release and
due-dates is assumed. This will allow enough time between
casting and lay-down in the stock-pile area to meet the customers
due-date as a proxy type constraint ie, an approximate or
substitute to the complexity of adding the homogenization and
sawing unit-operations.
Upon solution of the problem, the results of the optimization will
provide an optimized schedule which has properly accounted
for hot-metal supply and demand quantity balances and process
and operating procedure logic balances. This means that the
proper sizing, assignment, sequencing and timing of non-
renewable and renewable resources has been performed
subject to the production logistics constraints of the system. It
also implies that for any sequence of alloy-grade, which satisfies
its demand-order release and due-date, the schedule is feasible
(not optimal) for quantity and logic except for any instance
where a sequence dependent maintenance-operation is required
for a grade-to-grade switch-over (or cost) is invoked and an un-
modeled or relaxed constraint is violated. Fortunately, if there is
enough renewable and non-renewable resource slack in the
system given the supply and demand-orders (ie, bottlenecks or
critical equipment and stock resources are special cases) then
using proxy'd capacity details such as increasing the operation-
group shut-down time to that of the maximum sequence-
dependent transition time will enable useful solutions to be
generated that can be easily implemented.
Finally, the aspects of make-to-stock and make-order production
can be easily accommodated in this approach. For example, if
one large demand-order for an alloy-grade found in AlloyGroup2
is required, of which several furnaces and casters can produce
it, the closed-shop scheduling system may allocate parts of the
order to certain individual equipment within the given casthouse
their availability and capacity attributes in an opportunistic
fashion. An open-shop scheduling system would require the
order to be split manually by the user or it may be pre-allocated
by the planning system. If the split is not appropriate then the
system will show infeasibilities and some other split would need
to be decided by the user or the plan must be re-run. This merging and
splitting in some cases can be at the back-end of the casthouse,
however when production-order merging or splitting is required
through-out the different production levels or stages upstream in
the casthouses, this can be a difficult and time-consuming task
to relegate to the user. The consequences are to back-log orders
and/or to cut-corners in terms of operating policy ultimately
conceding quality.
Illustrative Example
The small but representative casthouse scheduling problem
found in Figure 4 is used as the illustrative example. All furnaces
in all operations have a lower bound hold-up size of 4-metric
tons and an upper limit of 70. For the sake of clarity, the
WashCast operations on each furnace are disallowed over the
27-hour scheduling time-horizon. The time-period duration is 0.5-
hours yielding 54 time-periods in total. The opening inventories
of each furnace are 4-metric tons and the fill-to-full quantity is
40-metric tons with a draw-to-empty quantity of 10. The semi-
continuous flow rate (ie, zero is also a lower bound if not flowing)
at which high or low-purity hot-metal can charge the furnaces is
30 to 50- metric tons per half-hour and the three furnaces can
be fed simultaneously where there is a hold-time of 2-hours after
the last fill in each furnace for the hold or steep-time to add the
component stocks. The continuous-process part of the caster
can only receive hot-metal from one furnace at a time and this
is imposed as a single-use logic constraint on the inlet port. The
batch-process part of the furnace, which represents the size of
the cast log (no particular geometry is selected in this example),
has a cycle-time of 3-hours with an operation-group shut-down
time of 6- hours for each caster size irrespective of the alloy-
group stock. Its batch size is 40.4-metric tons for Size1 and 48.6-
metric tons for Size2. The yields on the outlet ports of the batch
processes are 0.93812 for Size1 and 0.94856 for Size2 yielding
product stock batch-sizes of 37.9 and 46.1-metric tons
respectively. It is assumed that low and high-purity hot-metal is
always available and the due-dates for all six product stocks are
the end-of-scheduling time-horizon (ie, 27-hours); the release-
dates are the start-of-schedule.
The solve time for this example is 10-seconds on a Pentium IV
1.7 MHz laptop running Xpress-MILP from Dash Optimization
Inc. running standard branch-and-bound using all default settings.
There are approximately 500 binary variables, 2,200 constraints
1,400 continuous variables after pre-processing of the linear
programming (LP) matrix. When larger problem instances are
solved with more furnaces, casters and alloy-groups, engineered
heuristics can be used [11] to decrease the solve times at the
expense of perhaps less optimal solutions. There is no objective
function specified for this problem other than finding a feasible
solution without violation of any of the constraints and which
satisfies all demand-order quantities sometime within the horizon.
Theoretically the minimum makespan (minimum completion
time) to produce all six product stocks is 26.5-hours.
Figure 4 shows the profile of the three furnaces over the 27-hour
time-horizon with the hold-up quantities shown on the y-axis. As
is evident, Furnace3 is set-up in AlloyGroup3 and is dropped
first to the caster but is filled after the other furnaces. Then, after
3- hours Furnace2 is dropped then Furnace1 in that order. Each
furnace does two fills and two drops given the demand-order
requirements of six product stocks to produce one for each
alloy group and size.
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Conclusion
70
65
60
55
50
Presented in this article are several facets of scheduling the
45
40
relatively complex production found in aluminum smelter
35
30 casthouses. This is a closed-shop scheduling optimization problem
25
20 which involves both quantity and logic details and is solved as
15
10 such using state-of-the-art mixed-integer linear programming
5
0 software and a sophisticated mathematical programming modeling
0.0-h 1.5-h 3-h 4.5-h 6-h 7.5-h 9-h 10.5-h 12-h13.5-h 15-h16.5-h 18-h19.5-h 21-h
22.5-h 24-h25.5-h 27-h
and formulation approach. In a production environment there can
be considerable benefits from optimizing the scheduling of
Time (Hours) casthouse operations. A small but representative illustrative
Furnace1-"AlloyGroup1" Furnace2-"AlloyGroup2"
example is provided which demonstrates some of the important
Furnace3-"AlloyGroup3" features of the problem and its solution.
Figure 4. Furnace profiles.
Finally, it should be strongly pointed out that it is always possible
Figure 5 displays the caster profile over the same 27-hours for the
to model the major (and minor) production details of any process
batch-process (Caster12) representing the mold size station.
industrial plant (or enterprise) using the concepts described. The
Operation-group Size2 is produced first and then Size1. There is
perpetual problem is being able to solve the problem in reasonable
a 6-hour time-delay before Size1 operation-group can start-up
time so that more profitable and useful solutions are found which
given the down-time restriction when changing molds in the caster are more and more accurate.
to achieve different sizes. As is obvious in the scheduling results,
there is a large degree of ambiguity from the perspective of the References
unit-operation assignments and sequencing. For example,
operation-group Size1 could have easily been scheduled first on
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different due-dates for each demand-order had been specified Issues and a Specialized Branch-and-Cut System bc prod”,
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6-h7.5-h 9-h 5. Kelly, JD, “Formulating Production Planning Models”, Chemical
0.0-h 1.5-h 3-h 4.5-h 10.5-h 12-h13.5-h 15-h16.5-h 18-h19.5-h 21-h22.5-h 24-h25.5-h 27-h
Engineering Progress, January, 43-50, (2004b).
Time (Hours)
6. Kelly, JD, “Production Modeling for Multimodal Operations”,
Caster12-"AlloyGroup1Size1" Caster12-"AlloyGroup1Size2" Chemical Engineering Progress, February, (2004a).
Caster12-"AlloyGroup2Size1" Caster12-"AlloyGroup2Size2"
Caster12-"AlloyGroup3Size1" Caster12-"AlloyGroup3Size2" 7. Pinedo, M., Scheduling: Theory, Algorithms and Systems,
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Figure 5. Caster12 (batch-process) profile
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Obviously this is a relatively easy example problem to solve which Production Planning”, Decision Science, 8, 28, (1977).
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simple simulator configured in a spreadsheet to propagate and 9. Shah, N., Pantelides, CC and Sargent, RWH, "A
report the quantity and logic constraint violations. However, as General Algorithm for Short-Term Scheduling of Batch
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