From Laboratory Development to Steelmaking Facility Scheduling: Defeating Skepticism

Abstract

The use in real environment of algorithms developed in laboratory is always a challenge for the academic world. On the contrary, for industry, it is always a challenge to put in operation these algorithms letting them take important decisions that affect its daily results. Covering this gap is an amazing job plenty of obstacles. During the talk I will introduce the activity that my team develops inside a huge multinational steel making company and I will present a case of success of designing and deployment an evolutionary algorithm in our company.

Silvino Fernandez Alzueta (Bild: Silvino Fernandez Alzueta)

CV

Silvino Fernández Alzueta is a R&D Engineer at the Global R&D Division of ArcelorMittal for 14 years. He develops his activity in the ArcelorMittal R&D Centre of Asturias in Spain, in the framework of the Business and TechnoEconomic project Department (KiN). He has a Master Science degree in Computer Science, obtained at University of Oviedo in Spain, and also a Ph.D. in Engineering Project Management obtained in 2015. His main research interests are analytics, metaheuristics and swarm intelligence, and he has broad experience using these techniques in industrial environment to optimize production processes. His research is 100% applied. His paper "Scheduling a Galvanizing Line by Ant Colony Optimization" obtained the best paper award in the ANTS conference in 2014.