Scheduling and common due date assignment on a single parallel-batching machine with batch delivery

Abstract

We consider a single parallel-batching machine scheduling problem with delivery involving both batching scheduling and common due date assignment. The orders are first processed on the single parallel-batching machine and then delivered in batches to the customers. The batching machine can process several orders at the same time. The processing time of a production batch on the machine is equal to the longest processing time of the orders assigned into this batch. A common due date for all the orders in the same delivery batch and a delivery date for each order need to be determined in order to minimize total weighted flow time. We first prove that this problem is NP hard in the strong sense. Two optimal algorithms by using dynamic programming are derived for the two special cases with a given sequence of orders on the machine and a given batching in the production part, respectively.