OR Practice—Determining Lot Sizes and Resource Requirements: A Review

Hybrid heuristics for planning lot setups and sizes

The planning of a canning line at a drinks manufacturer is discussed and formulated as a mathematical programming model. Several alternative heuristic solution methods are developed, tested and compared on real data, illustrating the trade-offs between solution quality and computing time. The two most successful methods make hybrid use of local search and integer programming, but in rather diff...

Optimal Lot Sizes with Geometric Production Yield and Rigid Demand

A Multi-objective optimization model for project scheduling with time-varying resource requirements and capacities

Proper and realistic scheduling is an important factor of success for every project. In reality, project scheduling often involves several objectives that must be realized simultaneously, and faces numerous uncertainties that may undermine the integrity of the devised schedule. Thus, the manner of dealing with such uncertainties is of particular importance for effective planning. A realistic sc...

Guides to Inventory Policy: Functions and Lot Sizes

But this is only one of the characteristic problems business managers face in dealing with production planning, scheduling, keeping inventories in hand, and expediting. Other questions just as perplexing and baffling when managers approach them on the basis of intuition and pencil work alone-are: How often should we reorder, or how should we adjust production, when sales are uncertain? What cap...

Programming for Economic Lot-Sizes with Precedences Between Items

In the manufacture of certain products such as computers, turbines, and automobiles, various components and subassemblies must be combined in a specified assembly order over a period of time. Certain items must be on hand before others can be produced, and these requirements are determined by the product structure. Management's objective is to turn out timely products in the most economic ...