The multi-period multi-level capacitated lot-sizing and scheduling problem in the dairy soft-drink industry

Lot-sizing and scheduling are a well-known problem. However, there only few works addressing the problem in food industry. We propose mixed-integer-programming model for lot-sizing dairy production process. The latter is composed of standardisation tanks that can store different types flavours ultra-high temperature (UHT) lines. considers limited shelf life liquid bottleneck alternate between stages. Ten representative instances using real data addressed with an exact method relax-and-fix heuristic. results show assignment strategies increase costs. Moreover, these do not reveal total capacity related to some industrial settings but also limit at which given setting moves from UHT line tanks.