REPETITIVE LOTS: FLOW‐TIME REDUCTIONS THROUGH SEQUENCING AND DYNAMIC BATCH SIZING

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Abstract
This paper presents a new integrative concept for job sequencing, dispatching, and lot sizing. The interrelation between these procedures and their impact on flow‐time performance is examined in a capacitated production environment. Generally, lot‐sizing decisions are made without regard to shop conditions and do not consider their impact on job sequencing procedures. The repetitive lots (RL) concept (developed and tested in this paper) attempts to integrate these decision processes.RL uses a number of features which have not been considered jointly in either the lot‐sizing or job‐dispatching/sequencing literature. These include operation batch sizes which vary by operation, transfer of work within the shop in quantities less than operation batch size, and the use of overlapped operations. A simulation model is used to analyze flow‐time characteristics in a hypothetical production system. Traditional measures of flow‐time performance are compared to a set of nontraditional measures which capture the interaction between lot sizing and the sequencing procedure used.