Surveys multiple‐stage production planning literature to reveal that this sizeable body of research is largely inspired by single‐item production planning. Suggests several promising research opportunities, including the possible development of scheduling techniques not derived from older,...

In a multi‐item environment with a joint set‐up cost structure considerable savings may be realised by co‐ordinating the replenishments. This article presents a unified survey of the inventory control literature designed to capture the models that fit in this frame. In general these models...