Customer Order Scheduling Problems on Parallel Machines with Job Capacity Restriction

We consider the customer order scheduling problem with job capacity restriction where the number of jobs in the shop at the same time is fixed. In the customer order scheduling problem, each job is part of some batch (customer order) and the composition of the jobs (product) in the batch is pre-specified. The objective function is associated with the completion time of the batches instead of the completion time of the jobs. We first summarize the known results for the general customer order scheduling problems. Then, we establish some new properties for the problems with job capacity restriction. For the case of unit processing time with the objective of minimizing makespan, we develop a polynomial-time optimal procedure for the two machine case. For the same problem with a variation of no batch alternation, we also develop a polynomial-time optimal procedure. Then, we show that the problems with the objectives of minimizing makespan and minimizing average batch completion time become NP-hard when there exist arbitrary number of machines. Finally, We propose optimal solution procedures for some special cases.