A compact heuristic for common cycle lot-size scheduling in multi-stage, multi-product production processes

Common Cycle Scheduling Problem (CCSP) is concerned with determining production lot sizes for a given set of products using a common facility. It is based on scheduling all products using a common (base) cycle time, so that the lot size for each product is the forecasted demand for that product over the base cycle time. After reviewing the literature, this paper provides an efficient heuristic solution for the CCSP in a multi-stage, multiproduct, flow shop environment, generalizing earlier results, as well as the single-product results of Szendrovits (1975). The framework presented determines a jointly common cycle time and production schedule (start and finish times for each product's production lot size) for the multi-stage facility in question.