The Effect of Restricting Cycle Times in the Economic Lot Scheduling Problem

The economic lot scheduling problem (ELSP) involves specifying economic cycle times for each of several products produced by a set of machines. The extensive, usually experimentally based, literature on the ELSP indicates that it may be desirable to restrict the possible choice of cycle times for each product to a small and very structured set of possible cycle times. In this paper we examine the economic impacts of such a restriction and give evidence that is highly supportive of this type of restriction; in particular, the “powers of 2” sets of possible cycle times used in practice appear to be very desirable from an economic viewpoint.