| Abstract: | ![]()
In recent years the reported successes of Japanese production systems, particularly the just-in-time approach to inventory control, has caused managers to focus more of their attention on efficient decision-making procedures for determining production schedules that minimize inventory costs. One such potential area of attention is the economic lot-scheduling problem (ELSP), which occurs in a variety of manufacturing environments where machining operations are prevalent. The economic lot-scheduling problem addresses the determination of lot sizes for N products with constant demand (and cycled through one machine with a given production rate) to minimize setup and inventory costs. The most successful solution approaches to the ELSP have been based on the concept of a basic period that is of sufficient length for the production of all items, even though each item might not be produced during each repetition of the basic period. This paper proposes a heuristic approach to the solution of the ELSP (referred to as the method of prime subperiods), which is an extension of the basic period approaches. The procedure is described and demonstrated via an example and then tested using a set of six example problems previously employed in the literature related to the ELSP. The results indicate as good or superior performance by the proposed method of prime subperiods. |
