Characteristics-based Estimation of distribution algorithm for the steelmaking-refining-continuous casting scheduling problem in the real-world steel plants

As a key production process in the steel industry, excellent scheduling of Steelmaking-refining-Continuous Casting (SCC) manufacturing process can improve production efficiency, shorten the steel production cycle, and reduce the production cost for steel enterprises. This paper presents a Characteristics-based Estimation of Distribution Algorithm (CEDA) for the SCC scheduling problem in the real-world steel plants. Considering the processing characteristics of the continuous casting machine, a novel caster-based encoding scheme and an improved decoding scheme are proposed. Also, a distance concept is introduced to mitigate the impact of similar individuals on the probability model, and an importance-based probability model updating mechanism is designed to increase the impact of excellent individual on the probability model. Furthermore, an individual sampling scheme with enhanced probability is constructed to ensure continuous processing of the continuous casting machine as much as possible. Finally, this paper designs a limited insertion operation in the local search to address the exploitation of the proposed algorithm. Extensive numerical simulations demonstrate that the proposed CEDA for the SCC scheduling process is more efficient than some state-of-the-art algorithms in the literature.