Scheduling with Fixed Delivery Dates

Abstract

In most classical scheduling models, it is assumed that a job is dispatched to a customer immediately after its processing completes. In many practical situations, however, a set of delivery dates may be fixed before any jobs are processed. This is particularly relevant where delivery is an expensive or complicated operation, for example, as with heavy machinery. A similar situation arises where customers find deliveries disruptive and thus require them to be made within a limited time interval that repeats periodically. A third possibility is that a periodic business function, for example, the supplier's billing cycle, effectively defines a delivery date, and includes all jobs that have been completed since the previous billing cycle. These situations are not adequately represented by classical scheduling models. We consider a variety of deterministic scheduling problems in which a job is dispatched to a customer at the earliest fixed delivery date that is no earlier than the completion time of its processing. Problems where the number of delivery dates is constant, and others where it is specified as part of data input, are studied. For almost all problems considered, we either provide an efficient algorithm or establish that such an algorithm is unlikely to exist. By doing so, we permit comparisons between the solvability of these fixed delivery date problems and of the corresponding classical scheduling problems.

A Joint Scheduling of Production and Distribution Operations in a Flow Shop Manufacturing System

“…Herrmann and Lee [5], Yuan [6], Chen [7], and Cheng et al [8] evaluated that products are delivered after being processed by innite delivery capacity via enough number of vehicles. Yang [9] and Hall et al [10] considered some additional assumptions of such a problem. Yang [9] proposed a model similar to the one studied by Cheng et al [8], yet with given delivery dates.…”

“…Constraint (1-11) implies the departure time of vehicles from production center. Constraint (1)(2)(3)(4)(5)(6)(7)(8)(9)(10)(11)(12) implies that service time of each customer after the completion of previous customer service is the routing of allocated vehicle. In addition, Constraint (1-12) acts as a sub tour elimination constraint in this model.…”

Integrated Production Scheduling and Delivery Routing: Complexity Results and Column Generation

“…Hence, the focus of the analysis is often on scheduling and batching. In [10], the authors consider the problem in which the delivery dates are fixed in advance and in [5], there are various destinations but a batch must contain jobs of the same destination. Complexity results are given by [3] for the problem with a single vehicle, a storage area and one or two customers.…”

Interval scheduling: A survey

“…Thus, dates for production tend to become more exogeneously determined, as opposed to a more traditional setting where the plant itself could decide when to manufacture a job (see e.g. Hall et al [44]). This phenomenon is enhanced by current logistic developments in which production is organized by supply chains.…”