Simulation-based sequencing and lot size optimisation for a production-and-inventory system with multiple items

Since that problem is too complex for an analytical solution we restrict our search for an optimal policy to simple structured policies, which can be described by a few parameters. To find optimal parameter values we use simulation optimisation, where a simulator for the system is combined with a genetic algorithm as an optimiser. The paper is finished with some numerical examples to show the applicability of the proposed approach.