Manufacturing batch size and ordering policy for products with shelf lives

This paper determines an optimum production schedule and raw material ordering policy for a family of products that share a common piece of production facility, and the inventory operates under a shelf life constraint. The problem of manufacturing a family of products under shelf life is addressed here mainly under three major issues: adjusted production rate, adjusted cycle time, and simultaneous adjustment of production rate and cycle time. This research addressed the issues in two major parts: the first part comprises planning an optimum production schedule and material ordering policy for a family of products with a constant production cost for operating the machines. The second part of the research considers a generalized production cost of operation where the cost of operation may increase or decrease depending on the production system. Results are demonstrated to show the computational mechanics and incremental advantages over the other models. A sensitivity analysis is performed to study the effect of variability of some parameters that play important roles in the models. An empirical test has also been conducted to show the relative performance of the models.