Priority Rules for Multi-Task Due-Date Scheduling under Varying Processing Costs

Production and Operations Management · 2016 · Volume 25 · Issue 12

Abstract

We study the scheduling of multiple tasks under varying processing costs and derive a priority rule for optimal scheduling policies. Each task has a due date, and a non-completion penalty cost is incurred if the task is not completely processed before its due date. We assume that the task arrival process is stochastic and the processing rate is capacitated. Our work is motivated by both traditional and emerging application domains, such as construction industry and freelance consulting industry. We establish the optimality ofShorter Slack time and Longer remaining Processing time(SSLP)principlethat determines the priority among active tasks. Based on the derived structural properties, we also propose an effective cost-balancing heuristic policy and demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed policy through extensive numerical experiments. We believe our results provide operators/managers valuable insights on how to devise effective service scheduling policies under varying costs.

Keywords

multi-task due-date scheduling, varying processing costs, make-to-order, priority rule

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