A major task of the production scheduler is to schedule jobs to meet the delivery dates demanded by customers while minimising inventory and production costs. The scheduling problem is further complicated when customers adopt a Just-In-Time philosophy and are unwilling to accept the delivery of jobs either early or tardy. In such an environment earliness as well as tardiness is discouraged, hence this situation is commonly referred to as the early/tardy (E/T) scheduling problem.

This work on early/tardy single machine scheduling has been with Ross James of the University of Canterbury.

Current Research

We are investigating formulating the E/T scheduling problem as a bi-criterion problem and using MCDM techniques, in conjunction with the heuristics already developed, to find solutions.

Publications

• R.J.W.James and J.T. Buchanan (1998), "Performance Enhancements to Tabu Search for the Early/Tardy Scheduling Problem" European Journal of Operational Research, 106, 254-265.
• R.J.W. James and J.T. Buchanan (1997), "Robustness of single machine scheduling problems to earliness and tardiness errors", Annals of Operations Research, 76, 219-232.
• R.J.W. James & J.T. Buchanan (1997), "A Neighbourhood Scheme with a Compressed Solution Space for the Early/Tardy Scheduling Problem", European Journal of Operational Research, 102(3), 513-527. (Paper)
• R.J.W. James and J.T. Buchanan (1995), "Finding Good Schedules: Are Really Wrong Penalties All Right?", ORSNZ 31st Annual Conference Proceedings, pp 217-222
• R.J.W.James and J.T.Buchanan (1994), "A Neighbourhood Scheme using a Compressed Solution Space for the Early/Tardy Scheduling Problem", Department of Management Systems, University of Waikato, Research Report Series 1994-4
• R.J.W. James and J.T. Buchanan (1994), "Using Tabu Search to Solve the Early/Tardy Machine Scheduling Problem", ORSNZ 30th Annual Conference Proceedings, pp 100-105

Page updated: 16 April, 1998 - JTB