Empirical evidence of an efficient formulation for the multi-period setup carryover lot sizing problem

Abstract

In this paper we present an effective flexible formulation for the capacitated multi-item lot-sizing problem with setup carryovers and setup times. The formulation can accommodate setup times, single or multi-period setup carry-overs, backorders with limits on the number of backorder periods, and shelf-life restrictions without the need for any additional variables and constraints. We provide empirical evidence of the superiority of our model over conventional formulations by comparing LP lower bounds generated on a number of randomly generated test problems. Our flexible formulation dominated the results in 100% of the problem cases.