Title: A two-phase metaheuristic approach for solving Economic Lot Scheduling Problems

Authors: C. Chandrasekaran, Chandrasekharan Rajendran, O.V. Krishnaiah Chetty, D. Hanumanna

Addresses: Combat Vehicles Research and Development Establishment, Defence Research & Development Organisation, Government of India, Avadi, Chennai – 600 054, India. ' Department of Management Studies, IIT Madras, Chennai – 600 036, India. ' Faculty of Engineering, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Mauritius, Mauritius, IIT Madras, Chennai – 600 036, India. ' Technical Centre, Ashok Leyland, Vellivayalchavadi, Chennai 600 103, India

Abstract: In this paper, economic lot scheduling problem is investigated using time-varying lot sizes approach. The process of finding the best production sequence consists of two-phase implementation of metaheuristics. In the first phase, we propose a genetic algorithm that makes use of the proposed new lower bound to arrive at the good set of production frequencies of products for ELSP without/with backorders. In the second phase, the best sequence of part production is achieved by using the above set of frequencies and employing a GA and an ant-colony algorithm. Computational experiments reveal the effectiveness of the two-phase approach over the conventional single-phase approach.

Keywords: ELSP; economic lot scheduling problem; metaheuristics; GAs; genetic algorithm; ACA; ant colony algorithm; single-phase approach; two-phase approach; sequence-independent setup times; sequence-dependent setup times; backorder; lower bound; lot sizing.

DOI: 10.1504/IJOR.2009.023286

International Journal of Operational Research, 2009 Vol.4 No.3, pp.296 - 322

Published online: 17 Feb 2009 *

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