Scheduling to minimise penalties for a non-dedicated supplier in integrated supply chains

We consider a scheduling problem faced by a supplier in an integrated supply-chain relationship simultaneously with two or more customers. Each customer demands multiple lots of products to be delivered each day. Late deliveries are subject to penalties. The supplier's problem is to schedule the day's production, given fixed resources, to minimise the penalties. We propose three heuristics – Earliest Delivery Time Next (EDT), Earliest Loading Time Next (ELT) and Penalty-Based Improvement (PBI) heuristic. Empirical results show that PBI heuristic performs significantly better than the other two heuristics, saving as much as 53% compared to EDT heuristic.