Molten iron transportation serves as a key link connecting ironmaking and steelmaking processes, and its locomotive scheduling problem is characterized by key features of steel production, such as service time windows and a last-in-first-out loading and unloading sequence. To address this problem, with the objective of minimizing the total locomotive travel time, two mixed-integer programming models, namely a node-based locomotive scheduling model and a pattern-based locomotive scheduling model, were proposed and constructed. According to the model characteristics, a reinforcement learning-based Benders decomposition heuristic algorithm was proposed. In the proposed algorithm, the Benders decomposition algorithm framework was adopted to decompose the pattern-based locomotive scheduling model, and simultaneously, the Q-learning algorithm was introduced to adaptively adjust the fixation and exclusion sets of the pattern decision variables in the master problem to accelerate convergence. Experimental results indicate that compared with the solver, the proposed heuristic algorithm possesses greater advantages in solution quality and computational time in large-scale instances. Effective decision support can be provided by this study for steel enterprises to improve the operational efficiency of the molten iron transportation system and achieve efficient coordination between production processes.
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