An integrated value-derivative model for the steel industry to evaluate and optimize the impact of operational strategies using total enterprise performance indicators

The purpose of this research was to develop a structured evaluation and optimization methodology for a prototype Value Chain Analysis model created by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory to identify and select new operational strategies/technologies for steel manufacturing plants in order to enhance their performance. The research’s major objectives were (a) to develop an enterprise mathematical model that describes the steel manufacturing process in terms of performance indicators, that adequately explains the marginal changes in outputs that occur per unit changes in inputs at the process step level, and that further illustrates how each process chains together in the production sequence; (b) to develop enterprise mathematical programming models for a number of optimization approaches to search for optimal or pareto-optimal values of the process performance indicators given a set of parameters; and (c) to develop methods to numerically solve, through a mix of heuristic and optimization techniques, the mathematical programming problems to optimize the manufacturing process’ performance in order to achieve the maximum leveraged benefits for the entire enterprise.