Hybrid Solution of Parallel Machine Scheduling with Earliness and Tardiness Penalties

Abstract

Recently, extensive researches on scheduling have been reported from the theoretical as well as the practical view points. Here, as for the optimality criteria of schedules, regular ones have been considered in most of the reserches. There are, however, many applications in which non-regular objective functions are appropriate. This paper deals with identical parallel machine scheduling problems with a non-regular objective function of the minimax type based on the earliness and the tardiness penalties. First, a hybrid method adopting the meta-heuristics and the list scheduling techniques is reformulated. Then, through several computational experiments, the effectiveness and the potential of the hybrid method are investigated.