Period of processing on serial production line, optimal scheduling and application

In this paper, we study period of processing on serial production line when batch jobs are processed under non-blocking optimal control. For the state that different jobs can be completed on different or same machines, we giv e expression of period of processing. Then we present an optimal scheduling problem, and put forward an algorithm to solve this problem. Finally we ap ply these results to hot-metal rolling serial production line at TaiYuan st eel company, China, and obtain an optimal scheduling table of different kin ds of steer prates.