Single Machine Scheduling to Minimize Weighted Earliness Subject to Ready and Due Times

Abstract

This paper considers a single machine scheduling problem in just-in-time production environment under the constraints of prespecified ready and due times. That is, every job is available for processing on the ready time of each job and cannot be processed before the time. Also, every job must be completed before or just on the due time of each job, and no tardy jobs are allowed. An optimization algorithm for the scheduling problem based on the Branch-and-Bound method is proposed to effectively determine the optimum solution so as to minimize the total weighted earliness with respect to the due times as objective function. Although the computational time through the proposed algorithm increases exponentially to solve problems by increasing the number of jobs, the branching operation and strong lower bound for the proposed algorithm will enhance the computational efficiency. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm will be also shown by some simulation results.