Batch scheduling in a two-level supply chain – a focus on the supplier

This paper studies the batch scheduling problem in a supply chain from the supplier's point of view. The supplier has to manufacture multiple products in large quantities and deliver them to customers in batches. There is an associated delivery cost with each delivered batch. The objective of the supplier is to minimize the inventory holding and delivery costs. The supplier's system is modeled as a one-stage system in which processing a batch requires a setup when the system switches to a different product. A polynomial-time algorithm is presented to minimize the sum of the total inventory holding cost and the batch delivery cost of the supplier.