A Route Planning Optimisation System for the Steelmaking Industry Based on Multi-objective Evolutionary Algorithms

In this paper a novel planning system for coils route optimisation among different processing steps of a generic steelmaking plant will be presented. This new approach, in addition to production times and costs, considers also customers' quality requirements. The system is based on Multi-Objective Optimisation and, in particular, it can exploit different paradigms of Multi-Objective Evolutionary Algorithms by means of the Strategy design pattern. The system has been then developed in C++ (for the optimisation module) and C# (for the graphical user interface). Moreover, it is highly configurable and it can be easily adapted to several real industrial scenarios by means of an XML configuration file describing the plant.