D. Mihailidis et Kr. Chelst, OPTIMAL BLENDING OF OUT-OF-SPECIFICATIONS SUBSTANCES, The Journal of the Operational Research Society, 49(5), 1998, pp. 458-466
Citations number
4
Categorie Soggetti
Management,"Operatione Research & Management Science","Operatione Research & Management Science
A chemical company produces powdery substances by a process that is di
fficult to control tightly. As a result, a significant proportion of p
roduction lots, fail to meet the specifications of one or more of the
key measurable characteristics. These lots are stored in bins that can
be later blended in fixed amounts so as to product a larger batch tha
t is within specifications on all measurements. The blending of these
bins is formulated here as an integer programming problem. This paper
describes the sequential solution procedure used to find an optimal so
lution. The sequential procedure includes a penalty function at each s
tep that is designed to force 'bad' lots, the most out-of-specificatio
ns, to blend first. The introduction of a variable step size eliminate
d the need for a branch-and-bound procedure.