Abstract: A reheating furnace area scheduling problem in steel production has the NP-hard feature of a combinatorial optimization problem. A mathematical model of the scheduling problem was established according to the production features of the furnace area. Of the scheduling model, the first aim is to minimize the energy consumption cost and the second to optimize the heating quality, so the scheduling problem can be summed up as a Boolean satisfiability problem. A binary encoding method and a hybrid genetic-tabu search algorithm were proposed to solve the mathematical model. Simulation results based on practical data show that the mathematical model and the solution method fully satisfy the demand of furnace area production scheduling. Under the condition of meeting process constraints, the production time is reduced, the charging temperature is increased and the heating quality is improved. The mathematical model and the solution method have a better performance of high production and energy efficiency than the traditional manual scheduling method.