“…A typical customer due date performance measure is minimization of the number of tardy orders, e.g., Markland et al (1990), Hopp and Spearman (1996), Silver et al (1998), Proud (1999) and Shapiro (2001). Simultaneously, increasing competition forces manufacturers to achieve low unit costs by utilizing renewable production resources (e.g., machines and people) highly and evenly and by minimizing the inventory, e.g., Leachman et al (1996), Younis and Saad (1996) and Neumann and Zimmermann (1999).…”