Title: Solving scheduling problems with earliness and tardiness penalties using priority rules and linear programming

Authors: Samir Saadaoui; Mohamed Mahjoub Dhiaf; Hichem Kamoun; Basem Barqawi

Addresses: Faculty of Economics and Management Sciences, University of Sfax, Tunisia Road Aéroport Km 4, BP 1088, Sfax 3018, Tunisia ' Higher Institute of Industrial Management of Sfax, Tunisia Road M'Harza Km 1.5, BP 1164, Sfax 3000, Tunisia; Emirates College of Technology, Millennium Tower, Sheikh Hamdan Street, P.O. Box 41009, Abu Dhabi, UAE ' Faculty of Economics and Management Sciences, University of Sfax, Tunisia Road Aéroport Km 4, BP:1088, Sfax 3018, Tunisia ' Emirates College of Technology, Millennium Tower, Sheikh Hamdan Street, P.O. Box 41009, Abu Dhabi, UAE

Abstract: Most research papers in production scheduling are concerned with the optimisation of a single criterion. However, the study of the performance of schedules often involves more than a single aspect and therefore needs a multi-objective treatment. For example, in just in time philosophy, it is very common to consider two conflicting criteria namely earliness and tardiness. Both of these criteria are obtained from processing times which can be in certain cases fixed or obtained from an interval. This scheduling problem can be solved by a wide range of different approaches including both exact and heuristic methods. In this paper, we try to find the most appropriate method that can minimise the two criteria simultaneously for a practical case in the chemical industry. A zero one integer linear programme was developed and implemented through the software LINDO which allowed us to solve our practical problem and compare its solution to those of some priority rules. The goal of this paper is to develop different methods that can find a schedule which minimises the sum of earliness and tardiness penalties.

Keywords: production scheduling; just-in-time; JIT; mathematical programming; earliness penalties; tardiness penalties; priority rules; linear programming; chemical industry.

DOI: 10.1504/IJOR.2014.063151

International Journal of Operational Research, 2014 Vol.20 No.4, pp.369 - 395

Received: 24 Feb 2012
Accepted: 28 Nov 2012
Published online: 29 Jul 2014 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article