Lot sizing in general assembly systems with setup costs, setup times, and multiple constrained resources

We introduce a heuristic method for finding good, feasible solutions for multiproduct lot sizing problems with general assembly structures, multiple constrained resources, and nonzero setup costs and setup times. We evaluate the performance of this heuristic by comparing its solutions to optimal solutions of small randomly generated problems and to time-truncated Optimization Subroutine Library (OSL) solutions of medium-sized randomly generated problems. In the first case, the heuristic locates solutions averaging 4 percent worse than optimal in less than 1 percent of time required by OSL. The heuristic solutions to medium-sized problems are approximately 26 percent better than solutions OSL finds after 10,000 CPU seconds, and the heuristic finds these solutions in approximately 10 percent of OSL time.