Mixed-Integer Linear Programming approaches to shelf-life-integrated planning and scheduling in yoghurt production

In the production of perishable products such as dairy, meat or bakery goods, the consideration of shelf life in production planning is of particular importance. Retail customers with relatively low inventory turns can benefit significantly from longer product shelf life as wastage and out-of-stock rates decrease. However, in today's production planning and control systems, shelf-life issues with regard to specific products or customers are only seldom accounted for. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to develop Mixed-Integer Linear Programming (MILP) models that integrate shelf-life issues into production planning and scheduling. The research is based on an industrial case study of yoghurt production. Relying on the principle of block planning, three different MILP models for weekly production planning are presented that apply a combination of a discrete and continuous representation of time. Overnight production and, hence, the necessity for identifying two different shelf-life values for the same production lot is included in the model formulation. Numerical experiments show that near-optimal solutions can be obtained within reasonable computational time.