Note—Performance Bounds for Lot Sizing Heuristics

This paper deals with the classical dynamic lot size problem without backlogging and capacity limitation. We derive worst case performance bounds for a class of lot sizing heuristics. When the considered methods are applied a decision whether to have a set-up or not in a certain period is taken without regarding the future demand. It is shown that 2 is a lower bound for the worst case performance ratio for such heuristics. The results illustrate circumstances under which the approximate techniques fail.