Testing feasibility in a lot scheduling problem

This paper considers a version of the Economic Lot Scheduling Problem in which there are no costs specified. The usual form of this problem seeks a pattern of production that minimizes the sum of holding the setup costs. It investigates the problem of finding a feasible schedule which avoids a stockout given the initial stocks of the products being manufactured. It is shown that this problem is NP-hard, and an effective heuristic method for its solution is proposed. This heuristic method is compared with a more naive approach to the problem and some computational results are given.