Planning and Scheduling of Electric Arc Furnace Based Steelmaking

Steelmaking and continuous casting (SCC) based on electric arc furnaces (EAF) are the most important stages and constitute a bottleneck. The processes in steelmaking are capital intensive, energy consuming and have directive effect on the downstream product quality. In real-world, electric arc furnace based steel production operations face a variety of unexpected events that disturb the initial plan and make it infeasible. Consequently, good scheduling is needed to keep up production continuity. This paper presents a review of relevant literature with a focus on production planning in an EAF based steel manufacturing. In this study, 41 publications in the past thirty years in the context of scheduling related to EAF and SCC have been carefully investigated. The objective is to bring clarity and give an overview of the state of the art, by analyzing most cited literature which address planning and scheduling. This paper identifies and addresses current trends as well as shortcomings. Lastly, the paper provides research gaps for future research.