A new Silver-Meal based heuristic for the single-item dynamic lot sizing problem with returns and remanufacturing

In a recent contribution, Teunter et al. [2006. Dynamic lot sizing with product returns and remanufacturing. International Journal of Production Research 44 (20), 4377-4400] adapted three well-known heuristic approaches for the single-item dynamic lot sizing problem to incorporate returning products that can be remanufactured. The Silver-Meal based approach revealed in a large numerical study the best performance for the separate setup cost setting, i.e. the replenishment options remanufacturing and manufacturing are charged separately for each order. This contribution generalises the Silver-Meal based heuristic by applying methods elaborated for the corresponding static problem and attaching two simple improvement steps. By doing this, the percentage gap to the optimal solution which has been used as a performance measure has been reduced to less than half of its initial value in almost all settings examined.