A Single Processor Scheduling Problem with a Common Due Window Assignment

Abstract

We consider a single processor scheduling problem with a common due window assignment. Jobs completed within the due window incur no penalty, while other jobs incur either earliness or tardiness penalties. Boundaries of the due window are decision variables. The objective is to minimize the sum of the total weighted earliness, the total weighted tardiness and due window width penalty. This problem is an extension of the classical Weighted Earliness and Tardiness problem (WET). We proved that our problem is NP-hard and presented some properties of an optimal solution. To solve the problem we constructed a dynamic programming algorithm and a fully polynomial time approximation scheme. We also presented a polynomial time algorithm for the case with unit job processing times.