Application of modified ant colony optimization algorithm to hot rolling lot planning

The hot rolling lot planning in iron and steel enterprises is a large-scale combination optimization problem with many restrictions. A special asymmetric vehicle routing problem is presented for modeling the hot rolling lot planning since it accords with the production practice. A modified ant colony optimization algorithm is proposed for solving the model. A variable parameter is used in the algorithm so that the utility of the heuristic information is more effective. Finally a comparison is showed between the modified ant colony optimization algorithm and the man-machine conversation method. A simulation example on the actual production data shows the effectiveness of the algorithm.