Note—On “Production Runs for Multiple Products: The Two-Product Heuristic”

The recent paper [Saipe, A. L. 1977. Production runs for multiple products: the two-product heuristic. Management Sci.23 (12, August) 1321–1327.] by Saipe considers the single-machine multi-product lot scheduling problem, this problem is concened with the determination of run sizes for a set of products which are produced on the same machine. In the paper [Saipe, A. L. 1977. Production runs for multiple products: the two-product heuristic. Management Sci.23 (12, August) 1321–1327.], a heuristic solution procedure, based on a solution procedure for the two-product lot scheduling problem, is proposed for the multi-product problem. The intent of this note is to raise three issues concerning the proposed heuristic procedure: (a) the optimality of the procedure for the two-product problem, (b) the performance of the procedure at full capacity for more than two products, and (c) the effectiveness of the procedure relative to alternative solution procedures.