Supply chain batching problem with identical orders and lifespan

Abstract

In the real world, there are a large number of supply chains that involve the short lifespan products. In this paper, we consider an integrated production and distribution batch scheduling problem on a single machine for the orders with a short lifespan, because it may be cheaper or faster to process and distribute orders in a batch than to process and distribute them individually. Assume that the orders have the identical processing time and come from the same location, and the batch setup time is a constant. The problem is to choose the number of batches and batch sizes to minimize the total delivery time without violating the order lifespan. We first give a backward dynamic programming algorithm, but it is not an actually polynomial-time algorithm. Then we propose a constant time partial dynamic programming algorithm by doing further research into the recursion formula in the algorithm. Further, using the difference characteristics of the optimal value function, a specific calculating formula to solve the problem with the setup time being integer times of the processing time is obtained.