Discrete lot sizing and scheduling using product decomposition into attributes

A production planning problem, known as the Discrete Lot sizing and S cheduling P roblem with seq uence-dependent changeov er costs, is considered. W e propose a new way of modelling the production sy stem based on the use of a multi attribute product structure encountered in many industrial situations. T he basic idea is to describe the products as combinations of phy sical attributes and to ex ploit this description to reduce the size of the mix ed-integer program to be solv ed. T he results of our computational ex periments show the practical usefulness of the proposed formulation which leads to signifi cantly improv ed effi ciency in the solution process.