A hybrid genetic algorithm and variable neighborhood search for multi-family capacitated lot-sizing problem

The paper presents a genetic algorithm (GA) hybridized with variable neighborhood search (VNS) to solve multi-item capacitated lot-sizing multi-family problem with setup times. The problem has a practical application in production planning e.g., in foundry industry, so test cases for computational experiments were based on the data from the real production process in a foundry. The VNS algorithm is used after a certain number of GA generations for all individuals in the population to improve solutions. The presented method applied for large instances of the problem outperforms both a dedicated genetic algorithm and a CLPEX Solver-based rolling horizon methods known from the literature.