Optimal plate design problem in steel production

In this paper, we address a new optimal plate design problem in steel production, in which slab selection is jointly considered. On the basis of the underlying features, the problem is formulated as a mixed integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) model with generalized disjunctive programming (GDP) constraints. A logic-based outer approximation (L-OA) algorithm is proposed to solve the problem. Specifically, a two-stage heuristic method is designed to initialize the L-OA algorithm. Numerical results are presented to demonstrate that the proposed L-OA algorithm and the heuristic method are effective and computationally efficient.