A hybrid decision support system for iron ore supply

Abstract

Many European metallurgical companies are forced to import iron ore from remote destinations. For these companies it is necessary to determine the amount of iron ore that will have to be ordered and to create such a delivery schedule so that the continuous operation of blast-furnace plant is not disrupted and there is no exceedingly large stock of this raw material. The objective of this article is to design the decision support system for iron ore supply which would effi ciently reduce uncertainty and risk of that decision-making. The article proposes a hybrid intelligent system which represents a combination of diff erent artifi cial intelligence methods with dynamic simulation technique for that purpose.