Paper Info
Title
Lot sizing and furnace scheduling in small foundries
Abstract
A lot sizing and scheduling problem prevalent in small market-driven foundries is studied. There are two related decision levels: (1) the furnace scheduling of metal alloy production, and (2) moulding machine planning which specifies the type and size of production lots. A mixed integer programming (MIP) formulation of the problem is proposed, but is impractical to solve in reasonable computing time for non-small instances. As a result, a faster relax-and-fix (RF) approach is developed that can also be used on a rolling horizon basis where only immediate-term schedules are implemented. As well as a MIP method to solve the basic RF approach, three variants of a local search method are also developed and tested using instances based on the literature. Finally, foundry-based tests with a real-order book resulted in a very substantial reduction of delivery delays and finished inventory, better use of capacity, and much faster schedule definition compared to the foundry's own practice.
Year
DOI
Venue
2008
10.1016/j.cor.2006.05.010
Computers & OR
Keywords
Field
DocType
small foundry,production lot,better use,basic RF approach,MIP method,lot sizing,faster schedule definition,local search method,metal alloy production,faster relax-and-fix,furnace scheduling,scheduling problem
Mathematical optimization,Job shop scheduling,Metal alloy,Scheduling (computing),Integer programming,Sizing,Mathematics,Metaheuristic
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
35
3
Computers and Operations Research
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
22
1.03
15
Authors
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Silvio A. Araujo11048.44
Marcos N. Arenales2794.96
Alistair R. Clark31278.93