Controllable production rates in a family production context

The authors consider a single facility dedicated to the production of a family of items where the policy used is to cycle production through the items every T units of time. This is known as the Common Cycle or Rotation Schedule and is a special case of the Economic Lot Scheduling Problem. They consider the case in which the production rates can be reduced from known maximum rates. Moreover, the authors assume that production rates can be changed during the production runs. They optimally partition the items into those with high and low holding costs. The former are initially produced to meet demand while the latter are always produced at their maximum rates. Numerical examples indicate savings almost twice as large as those reported in the literature.