This book addresses decision making in reverse logistics, which concerns the integration of used and obsolete products back into the supply chain as valuable resources. It covers a wide range of aspects, related to distribution, production and inventory management, and supply chain management. For each topic, it highlights key managerial issues in real-life examples and explains which quantitative models are available for addressing them. By treating a broad range of issues in a unified way, the book offers the reader a comprehensive view on the field of reverse logistics.

This textbook provides a comprehensive modeling, reformulation and optimization approach for solving production planning and supply chain planning problems, covering topics from a basic introduction to planning systems, mixed integer programming (MIP) models and algorithms through the advanced description of mathematical results in polyhedral combinatorics required to solve these problems. Based on twenty years worth of research in which the authors have played a significant role, the book addresses real life industrial production planning problems (involving complex production structures with multiple production stages) using MIP modeling and reformulation approach. The book provides an introduction to MIP modeling and to planning systems, a unique collection of reformulation results, and an easy to use problem-solving library. This approach is demonstrated through a series of real life case studies, exercises and detailed illustrations. Review by Jakub Marecek (Computer Journal) The emphasis put on mixed integer rounding and mixing sets, heuristics in-built in general purpose integer programming solvers, as well as on decompositions and heuristics using integer programming should be praised... There is no doubt that this volume offers the present best introduction to integer programming formulations of lotsizing problems, encountered in production planning. (2007)

Handbook

Issues for Feb. 1965-Aug. 1967 include Bulletin of the Institute of Management Sciences.

Authored by a team of experts, the new edition of this bestseller presents practical techniques for managing inventory and production throughout supply chains. It covers the current context of inventory and production management, replenishment systems for managing individual inventories within a firm, managing inventory in multiple locations and firms, and production management. The book presents sophisticated concepts and solutions with an eye towards today’s economy of global demand, cost-saving, and rapid cycles. It explains how to decrease working capital and how to deal with coordinating chains across boundaries.

Lotsizing problems are found in every company, which produces various items on resources with scarce capacities. In general, the objective is to find production plans, which meet demand with the resources` given capacities and at minimal costs. However, there is a great variety of company-specific lotsizing problems due to the complexity of the underlying production processes. Both standard MRP-systems and modern Advanced Planning Systems fail to provide adequate solutions. Instead, they most often compute production plans, which are not feasible in practice. In this book new lotsizing models are presented for multi-stage production systems with general product structures, dynamic demand, setup times and lead times. They are extended to cover production on parallel machines. An iterative solution procedure is presented, which generates feasible production plans within seconds of computation time. Potential readership includes scholars of supply chain management and production planning, interested students in these areas as well as practitioners involved in production planning.

This thesis deals with timing and sizing decisions for production lots, and more precisely, with mathematical models to support optimal tim ing and sizing decisions. These models are called lotsizing models. They are characterized by the fact that production lots are determined based on a trade-offbetween production costs and customer service. Production costs can be categorized as basic production costs, which consist of material costs, labour costs, machine startup costs and over head costs, and inventory related costs, which include costs of capital tied up in inventory, insurances and taxes. Customer service is the capability of the firm to deliver to their clients the products in the quantity they ordered at the agreed upon time and place. The costs of realizing a certain service level are usuaIly very dif ficult to convert into money. They include costs of expediting, loss of customer goodwill, and loss of sales revenues resulting from the short age situation.