A hybrid optimization procedure for solving a tire curing scheduling
  problem
  This paper addresses a lot-sizing and scheduling problem variant arising from
the study of the curing process of a tire factory. The aim is to find the
minimum makespan needed for producing enough tires to meet the demand
requirements on time, considering the availability and compatibility of
different resources involved. To solve this problem, we suggest a hybrid
approach that consists in first applying a heuristic to obtain an estimated
value of the makespan and then solving a mathematical model to determine the
minimum value. We note that the size of the model (number of variables and
constraints) depends significantly on the estimated makespan. Extensive
numerical experiments over different instances based on real data are presented
to evaluate the effectiveness of the hybrid procedure proposed. From the
results obtained we can note that the hybrid approach is able to achieve the
optimal makespan for many of the instances, even large ones, since the results
provided by the heuristic allow to reduce significantly the size of the
mathematical model.
