Feasibility of Scheduling Lot Sizes of Three Products on One Machine

This paper considers the Economic Lot Scheduling Problem: that is, the problem of finding a feasible schedule that allows cyclic production of several products on a single facility so as to minimize holding and set up costs. We consider the case when three products are required to be produced in a given fixed lot size and at regular intervals. We derive a very simple test for existence of a feasible schedule and a method of constructing feasible schedules if one exists. The approach is simpler than the mixed integer programming approach and enumeration schemes currently proposed in the literature and is constructive.