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How to determine economic production runs (EPR) for multiple products in flexible manufacturing systems (FMS) is considered in this paper. Eight different although similar, models are developed and presented. The first four models are devoted to the cases when no shortage is allowed. The other four models are some kind of generalization of the previous ones when shortages may exist. The numerical examples are given as the illustration of the proposed models.

The economic lot scheduling problem is analysed for the case when the cost of setups, but not their duration, is assumed to be zero. This would be the case when setups are performed by the machine operators, or when management's goal is holding-cost reduction. Theoretical results are presented describing when the common cycle solution of producing one lot of every item every cycle is optimal or near optimal. Computational results using simulated data are then presented which show that the common cycle solution is nearly optimal in a wide range of practical situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]