Lot streaming in open shops

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Operations Research Letters

Volume 23, Issue 3-5, 01-October-1998

Operations Research Letters Vol. 23 (3-5) pp. 135-142
Copyright (c) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

Lot streaming in open shops

^a Alper {S¸}en
^b Ömer S. Benli

^a Information and Operations Management Department, Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, , CA 90089, USA
^b Department of Industrial Engineering, Bilkent University, 06533 , Ankara, Turkey

Received 25 August 1997; Revised 1 July 1998

Abstract

We study lot streaming in shops in which the order the jobs are to be processed is immaterial. For a single job case, the properties of the optimal routing is determined. For the multi job case, two machine shops are analyzed. It is shown that lot streaming will improve makespan only if there is a job with large processing times. We show that there can be at most one such job and derive the optimal sublot sizes and their sequence.

Keyword(s): Production/scheduling; Lot streaming; Open shop