A MINLP/RCPSP decomposition approach for the short- term planning of batch production

We present a new solution approach for short-term planning of batch production, which decomposes the problem into batching and batch scheduling. Batching converts the primary requirements for products into individual batches. We formulate the batching problem as a mixed-integer nonlinear program, which can be solved by standard software. Batch scheduling allocates the batches to scarce resources such as processing units and intermediate storage facilities. The batch scheduling problem is modelled as a resource-constrained project scheduling problem, which is solved by a novel priorityrule based method.