Scheduling in a continuous galvanizing line

In this paper we address a sequencing problem in a Continuous Galvanizing Line of a Spanish Steel Company. Production scheduling in this context is an extremely complex task which needs to take into account many constraints. We present a conceptually simple model and a Tabu Search (TS) algorithm that efficiently solves it. The TS moves are defined in order to repair non-satisfied constraints, leading to smaller and more efficient neighbourhoods. The TS co-ordinates several intensification and diversification procedures guided by an evaluation function based on a shifting penalty strategy. This function reinforces the anticycling mechanism and makes the algorithm avoid already visited soluti…