MIP-based heuristics for lotsizing in capacitated pure flow shop with sequence-dependent setups

Lotsizing in capacitated pure flow shop with sequence-dependent setups has been considered in this paper. An exact formulation of the problem is provided as a mixed-integer program (MIP). It is well known that the capacitated lotsizing and scheduling problem (CLSP) is NP-hard. The introduction of serially arranged machines and sequence-dependent setups makes the problem even more complicated. Five MIP-based heuristics based on iterative procedures are provided. The first three heuristics are based on the original model but to solve non-small instances of problem, the last two heuristics are based on permutation flow shop problem which ignores the majority of combinations. To test the accuracy of heuristics, two lower bounds are developed and compared against the optimal solution. The trade-offs between solution quality and computational times of heuristics are also provided.