Multi-Item Single-Level Capacitated Dynamic Lot-Sizing Heuristics: A General Review

The multi-item single-level capacitated lot-sizing problem consists of scheduling N different items over a horizon of T periods. The objective is to minimize the sum of set-up and inventory-holding costs over the horizon, subject to a capacity restriction in each period. Different heuristic approaches have been suggested to solve this difficult mathematical problem. So far, only a few limited attempts have been made to analyse and compare these approaches. The paper can be divided into two main parts. The first part shows that current heuristics can be classified in two different categories: single-resource heuristics, which are special-purpose methods, and mathematical-programming-based heuristics, which can usually deal with more general problem environments. The second part is devoted to an extensive computational review. The general idea is to find relationships between the performance of the heuristic and the computational burden involved in finding the solution. Based on these computational results, suggestions can be given with respect to the usefulness of the various heuristics in different industrial settings.