Scheduling in continuous steelmaking casting: A systematic review

Abstract

The converter furnace and the continuous casting are the most important stages in steel production. Modern integrated processes directly connect the converter furnaces and the continuous casting machines with a flow of molten metal, and the steel is manufactured synchronously between the various machines. Starting from the traditional handmade programs for the management of these processes, during the last two decades there has been a notable increase in studies and publications in this field, trying to formulate scheduling in a rational and automatic way. The process has been approached for years through the development of both physical and operational research models, many of them theoretically. The main purpose of this study is to present a critical and in-depth evaluation of the previous studies, so that the state of the art of scheduling in steelworks can be evaluated. An approach based on a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) has been used, trying to search, evaluate, synthesize and analyze all the relevant studies for this specific field. As a result, the conclusions of the various analyses are presented and a study route is proposed for the design of the optimal planning methodology in the steelworks.