Structural properties and algorithms for earliness and tardiness scheduling against common due dates and windows: A review

Abstract

This paper deals with earliness and tardiness scheduling around common due dates and windows. Related problems share a strong practical importance due to the endogenous and exogenous cost structures that occur within just-in-time production systems. Despite of their significance, there are no survey papers that holistically address the two main variants of the problems in terms of the common due date (window) approach. We contribute to the field with a survey that covers problems where the common due date (window) is a given constraint as well as the ones where it is a decision variable. First, a framework is provided to segment the current literature and then a planning protocol establishes the boundaries of the survey. Searches conducted in a well-known scientific database identified more than 200 related papers and 170 of them were classified and summarized in comprehensive tables according to the objective function of the problem, the due date or due window approach, and the complexity of the available algorithms. Moreover, we discuss 26 structural properties that characterize optimal solutions shared by problems from single, parallel, and flow-shop machine environments. Our analysis shows that a lot of effort was directed to combine machine scheduling with other phenomena such as resource allocation, learning, deterioration, and rate-modifying activities specially in the single machine context, however, research on job shops and open shops is still scarce.