This paper proposes a simplified solution procedure to the model presented by Akinc and Roodman. The Benders’ decomposition procedure for analyzing this model has been developed, and its shortcomings have been highlighted. Here, the special nature of the problem is exploited which allowed us to develop a new algorithm through surrogating method. The two methods are compared by several numerical...

The Aggregate Production Plan (APP) is a schedule of the organization’s overall operations over a planning horizon to satisfy demand while minimizing costs. It is the baseline for any further planning and formulating the master production scheduling, resources, capacity and raw material planning. This paper presents a methodology to model the Aggregate Production Planning problem, which is comb...

Differential evolution (DE) has become a popular and promising technique in the recent decade. There are many successful applications implemented DE in scientific and engineering fields. However, we rarely found it applying to the field of highly constrained aggregate production planning (APP) problems. Besides, in the course of solving the APP problem, we discover that the most often used DE s...

This paper investigates the optimization problem of multi-product aggregate production planning (APP) with fuzzy data. From a comprehensive viewpoint of conserving the fuzziness of input information, this paper proposes a method that can completely describe the membership function of the performance measure. The idea is based on the well-known Zadeh’s extension principle which plays an importan...

Aggregate production planning (APP) is a medium-term capacity planning to determine the quantity of production, inventory and work force levels to satisfy fluctuating demand over a planning horizon. The goal is to minimize costs and instabilities in the work force and inventory levels. This paper is concentrated on multi-period, multi-product and multi-machine systems with setup decisions. In t...

Aggregate planning (AP) is a crucial step of the production planning procedure. It is the process by which a company determines optimal levels of capacity, production, subcontracting, and inventory for its long term planning. This paper presents a comparative analysis related to the impact of social and economic factors on building reliable aggregate plans for companies operating in an internat...