An Improved Discrete Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm for Steelmaking and Continuous Casting Scheduling Problem

Steelmaking-continuous casting (SCC) is the core link of the whole process of steel production. Therefore, this paper investigates a real-world hybrid flowshop scheduling problem in steelmaking process, in which the sojourn time, the earliness/tardiness of cast starting and the makespan are taken as the objective functions. Further, the mathematical model for this issue is established. An improved discrete artificial bee colony algorithm (IDABC) is presented to efficiently handle this issue. In the proposed algorithm, a neighborhood search strategy based on multiple block exchange is developed to improve the searching abilities. The IDABC algorithm is evaluated using a sample of the real SCC scheduling system, and numerical analysis is used to confirm the technique's efficacy. The experimental findings demonstrate that the presented IDABC method provides a better performance by comparing with other four efficient algorithms.