A. Stawowy

A variable neighborhood search for multi-family capacitated lot-sizing problem

Abstract The paper presents a novel variable neighborhood search (VNS) algorithm combined with a linear programming solver (LPS) to solve multi-item multi-family capacitated lot-sizing problem with setup times independent of the family sequence. The model has a direct application to real production planning in foundry industry, where the goal is to create the batches of manufactured castings and the sequence of the melted metal loads to prevent delays in delivery of goods to customers. We developed a simple and fast VNS based algorithm with problem-specific operators that are responsible for the neighborhood generating. For large instances of the problem the proposed algorithm is able to provide better results than CPLEX solver.