Lot-Sizing and Scheduling for the Plastic Injection Molding Industry—A Hybrid Optimization Approach

The management of industrial systems is done through different levels, ranging from strategic (designing the system), to tactical (planning activities and assigning resources) operational (scheduling activities). In this paper, we focus on latter level by considering a real-world scheduling problem plastic injection company, where production process combines parallel machines set resources. We present algorithm that metaheuristic list algorithm. Two metaheuristics are tested compared when used in proposed approach: stochastic descent simulated annealing. method’s performances analyzed an experimental study obtained results show its outcomes outperform those policy conducted case-study company. Moreover, besides being able solve large problems reasonable amount time, approach has structure makes it flexible easily adaptable several planning problems. Indeed, since composed reusable generic part, metaheuristic, only required develop adapted objective function constraints new be solved.