Patent ID: 8670856

Claim:
A method for optimizing modules of a manufacturing process, comprising: configuring a plurality of optimization modules for a manufacturing process each of the modules performing a plurality of steps; defining parameters for each of the pluralities of modules; determining at least one variable event for each of the modules; operating each optimization module in an iterative fashion, and exchanging information between the modules while the manufacturing process is occurring to adjust the at least one variable event for optimizing the manufacturing process, wherein in a first iteration, a first optimization module designs and communicates candidate casts for downstream processing to a second optimization module, the second optimization module responsively generating scheduled slabs and forwarding said scheduled slabs and any remaining unscheduled slabs to a third module according to a casting-level objective, said third module determining slab hot strip mill (HSM) processing time windows as partitioned time ranges for said slabs according to a HSM processing objective in which an independent optimization problem is solved in said third optimization module; and in a second iteration, one of: exchanging information of said determined slab hot strip mill (HSM) processing time windows from said third module to said first module and adjusting the at least one variable event in each of the modules to optimize the manufacturing process, wherein said first module redesigns candidate casts according to partitioned time ranges; or exchanging information of said determined slab hot strip mill (HSM) processing time windows from said third module to said second module and adjusting the at least one variable event in each of the modules to optimize the manufacturing process, wherein said second module adjusts a scheduling priority of these scheduled slabs according to said partitioned time ranges.