Manufacturing batch size and ordering policy for products with shelf lives

This paper determines an optimum production schedule and raw material order ing policy for a family of products that share a common piece of production facility, and the inventory operates under a shelf life constraint. The pr oblem of manufacturing a family of products under shelf life is addressed h ere mainly under three major issues: adjusted production rate, adjusted cyc le time, and simultaneous adjustment of production rate and cycle time. Thi s research addressed the issues in two major parts: the first part comprise s planning an optimum production schedule and material ordering policy for a family of products with a constant production cost for operating the mach ines. The second part of the research considers a generalized production co st of operation where the cost of operation may increase or decrease depend ing on the production system. Results are demonstrated to show the computat ional mechanics and incremental advantages over the other models. A sensiti vity analysis is performed to study the effect of variability of some param eters that play important roles in the models. An empirical test has also b een conducted to show the relative performance of the models.