A network flow IP formulation and exact/heuristics approaches for just-in-time scheduling problems on parallel machines without idle times

This article presents a type of scheduling problem widely used in the industry, known as just-in-time (JIT) scheduling or earliness-tardiness scheduling problem, where independent jobs with arbitrary processing times and weights on single and parallel machines are considered. A time-indexed mathematical formulation based on network flow, without machine idle-time, for single and parallel machines is presented for the problem. Algorithmic strategies are developed involving local search and path-relinking techniques, single and multi-start global search approaches. The best results are obtained with Iterated Local Search with multi-start global search, with tests performed on Tanaka’s single machine instances, achieving optimal solutions in most cases tested. Moreover, the methods presented are also suitable for dealing with multi-machine instances, where it is also possible to achieve optimal solutions, in most cases tested, in a reasonable execution time.

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