Single machine serial-batching scheduling with independent setup time and deteriorating job processing times

Abstract

This paper investigates the scheduling problems of a single serial-batching machine with independent setup time and deteriorating job processing times. With the assumption of deteriorating jobs, the job processing times are described by an increasing function of their starting times. All the jobs are first partitioned into serial batches and then processed on a single serial-batching machine. Before each batch is processed, an independent constant setup time is required. Two optimization algorithms are proposed to solve the problems of minimizing the makespan and the total number of tardy jobs, respectively. Specifically, for the problem of minimizing the total completion time, two special cases with the smallest and the largest number of batches are studied, and an optimization algorithm is also presented for the special case without setup time.