Exact mathematical formulations and metaheuristic algorithms for production cost minimization: a case study of the cable industry

Abstract

This paper addresses an application of production scheduling problems in cable industry. In cases where the size and color of cable are changed, the cable industry is classified as a multiproduct, mass production system. Two different mathematical programming models based on continuous time representation are proposed for a case study on the scheduling problem of the cable industry to minimize the total cost including setup cost, operating cost, and inventory holding cost. As the solution methodology, different grouping policies, for example, grouping cables of the same size and grouping cables of the same color are proposed. Then different metaheuristic methods based on simulated annealing and variable neighborhood search algorithms are applied to minimize the total cost of proposed solutions. Finally, the solution with the smallest total cost is selected as the production schedule of the case study, while Xpress solver could not provide any feasible solution for the mathematical models in the problem size of case study.