AN ECONOMIC PRODUCTION QUANTITY MODEL WITH LEARNING AND FORGETTING CONSIDERATIONS

The focus of this work is on the effects of learning on economic production quantity in batch production systems. We assumed that both unit variable manufacturing time and setup time follow a learning curve. We modified the classical Economic Production Quantity model to incorporate these two types of learning phenomena. We also incorporated the forgetting effect in our model so that a fraction of the learning is lost between consecutive lots. We developed a dynamic program to obtain the optimal solution to the problem. We investigated the nonincreasing lot size property and used it to improve the efficiency of our dynamic program. We consider a special case of the model in which all lot sizes are assumed equal. After theoretical treatment, we carried out a computational study of the effect of assuming equal lot sizes on the optimal solutions. The results of our examples strongly indicate that the assumption of equal lot sizes not only simplifies the determination of the optimal solutions, but also provides close approximations to the optimal solutions.