45. The Multi-plant Lot Sizing Problem with Multiple Periods and Items

The lot sizing problem consists in determining lot sizes and their scheduling to meet the required demands. This chapter focuses on a multi-plant lot sizing problem with planning for multiple items, each plant with their own demands and multiple periods. In spite of not been widely investigated, their theoretical and practical importance are supported by applications from private and public sectors. This chapter pays special attention to the multi-plant uncapacitated lot sizing problem (MPULSP). In particular, a novel network flow formulation is introduced, and some computational experiments were carried out to assess the performance of commercial solvers in solving a number of large instance problems. Moreover, a comparative analysis is performed by considering two other formulations for the MPULSP found in the literature.