Using Instance Statistics to Determine the Lookahead Parameter Value in the ATC Dispatch Rule: Making a good heuristic better

The Apparent Tardiness Cost (ATC) heuristic is one of the best performing dispatch rules for the weighted tardiness scheduling problem. This heuristic uses a lookahead parameter whose value must be specified. In this paper we develop a function that maps some instance statistics into an appropriate value for the lookahead parameter. This function is compared with some fixed values that have been previously used. The computational results show that the ATC heuristic performs better when the lookahead parameter value is determined by the proposed function.