Lot Sizing in Production Scheduling at a Personal Protection Equipment Company

Abstract

This work presents an optimization model to support decisions during production planning and control in the personal protective equipment (PPE) industry (in particular, gloves). A case study was carried out at a Brazilian company with the aim of increasing productivity and improving customer service with respect to meeting deadlines. In this case study, the mixed integer linear programming model of Luche (2009) was revisited. A new model for single-stage lot sizing was applied to the production scheduling of gloves. Optimizing this scheduling was not a simple task because of the scale of the equipment setup time, the diversity of the products and the deadlines for the orders. The model was implemented in GAMS IDE and solved by CPLEX 12. The model and the associated heuristic produce better solutions than those currently used by the company.