Production changeover policy on continuous descaling and cold-rolling mills

The cooperation mechanism between a continuous descaling and cold-rolling mill (CDCM) and its downstream machines, which is the bottleneck in cold rolling production management, is under consideration. The production changeover policy for the CDCM is studied to assure the continuity of production and to reduce both the inventories of work in process and the changeover frequency in production. A mathematical model is built to determin the order and lot size on the CDCM. A heuristic algorithm and three changeover rules are developed to solve practical problems. Computational results show the algorithm's effectiveness and adaptability with the data obtained from production practices.