Dispatching Rules for Minimizing Deviation from JIT Schedule Using the Earliness - Tardiness Scheduling Problem with Due Windows Approach

In Earliness-Tardiness (E/T) scheduling approach, the Just-In-Time (JIT) schedule is a schedule with zero earliness and zero tardiness. However, this is an optimal schedule and even notional in some instances where tardiness and earliness are inevitable. However, minimizing the deviation at the upper region (tardiness) and the lower region (earliness) from the JIT schedule is a challenge. This work proposes solutions. Two proposed heuristics; TA1 and TA2 as well as some existing heuristics were explored to solve simulated problems ranging from 5≤n≤400 and the results obtained were benchmarked against the JIT schedule. The results obtained show that one of the heuristics, TA2 yielded JIT schedules for many problem sizes at the lower and upper deviation than other solution methods.