Efficient production planning is essential for industrial enterprises. The same is increasingly important for ecological und sustainable business behavior. There is a change in entrepreneurial thinking due to the sensitivity about climate change, carbon emissions and rising energy prices. This new perspective has to be considered in all areas of an enterprise, especially the manufacturing area. As it is not possible to simply exchange or upgrade the existing machinery in production sites with more energy-efficient power supplies or ecological friendly systems, a new strategy has to be applied, covering the enhancement of production planning and scheduling approaches, especially the lot size planning, in order that eco-factors are considered when generating production schedules. As eco-factors occur during any production process, they cause costs – the so called eco-costs – that need to be considered. If these costs are ignored during planning they would anyhow affect total costs. The clearest example is the consideration of power consumption. The higher the energy consumption of a resource the higher the energy costs. If the energy consumption can be optimized with simultaneous lot size optimization, this would result in lower total costs. Therefore it is reasonable to take this parameter into account when creating allocation plans via lot size planning.
Taking all eco-factors that are relevant for production planning into consideration when performing lot size planning leads to the following benefits: