Integrated Lotsizing, Scheduling and Blending Decisions in the Spinning Industry

Abstract

In this paper, the relevance of integrated planning concerning decisions of production and blending in a spinning industry is studied. The scenario regards a plant that produces several yarn packages over a planning horizon. Each yarn type is produced using a blend of several cotton bales that must contain attributes to ensure the quality of the produced yarns. Three approaches to managing production and blending are compared; the first deals with the solution to the production scheduling and blending problems in a single integrated model. The second approach hierarchically addresses these problems. The third procedure combines features from the integrated and hierarchical approaches. These approaches are applied to a realworld problem, and their respective performances are analyzed. The third approach proved to deal with lot sizing, scheduling and blending in the spinning industry more efficiently. Moreover, the results indicate the importance of coordinating production and blending decisions.