Computational study of the multiechelon production palnning problem

In this article the authors try to identify appropriate solution procedures for different types of multiechelon production planning problems. They conduct an extensive computational study on uncapacitated multiechelon production planning problems with serial and assembly types of bill-of-material structures. Problems are formulated as both single-source fixed charge network problems and as multicommodity flow problems with fixed charges. Solution procedures considered are branch and cut, Lagrangean relaxation (for the network formulation), and branch and bound (for the multicommodity formulation). Three hundred problems with various problem structures are tested. The present conclusions suggest the best approach for each type of problem structure.