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 solutions. Our approach has been tested on some real instances from the galvanizing line. Computational results show that the TS improves, in all instances, the company solutions.