The work aims to study the scheduling optimization problem in the production workshop of guide roller, to shorten the completion time of workpiece and improve the production efficiency of the production line. A mathematical model was established with a guide roller production workshop as the research object to minimize the maximum completion time. In view of the actual working conditions of the guide roller production workshop, an improved genetic algorithm was proposed to solve the problems. Through the production scheduling of 10 guide rollers of different size, the improved genetic algorithm and the traditional genetic algorithm were used for experimental analysis. The results showed that the improved genetic algorithm had higher ability to find excellence than the traditional genetic algorithm, the completion time of the workpiece was shortened from 139 min to 113 min, by 18.7%. And the Gantt graph of production scheduling with a completion time of 113 min was generated. Compared with the traditional genetic algorithm, the improved genetic algorithm has higher global optimization ability and optimization accuracy in the optimization of guide roll production scheduling.