A Tabu List-Based Algorithm for Capacitated Multilevel Lot-Sizing with Alternate Bills of Materials and Co-Production Environments

Abstract

The definition of lot sizes represents one of the most important decisions in production planning. Lot-sizing turns into an increasingly complex set of decisions that requires efficient solution approaches, in response to the time-consuming exact methods (LP, MIP). This paper aims to propose a Tabu list-based algorithm (TLBA) as an alternative to the Generic Materials and Operations Planning (GMOP) model. The algorithm considers a multi-level, multi-item planning structure. It is initialized using a lot-for-lot (LxL) method and candidate solutions are evaluated through an iterative Material Requirements Planning (MRP) procedure. Three different sizes of test instances are defined and better results are obtained in the large and medium-size problems, with minimum average gaps close to 10.5%.

Keywords

• materials requirements planning
• lot sizing
• flexible manufacturing systems
• heuristic algorithms
• operations research
• tabu list
• GMOP
• alternate bill of materials
• coproduction