A NOTE: MINMAX DUE-WINDOW ASSIGNMENT WITH FIXED EARLINESS-TARDINESS COSTS

A single machine scheduling and due-window assignment problem is studied. The objective function is of a minmax type, i.e., the goal is to minimize the maximum cost among all processed jobs. In the classical setting of due-window assignment problems, there are four cost components: for job-earliness, job-tardiness, due-window starting-time and due-window size. We consider in this note a general cost structure which contains in addition to the standard linear earliness and tardiness cost components, a fixed penalty. Thus, early and tardy jobs are penalized also by a fixed cost which is independent of their actual earliness and tardiness values. We show that there are six candi-dates for the optimal starting time and size of the due-window. Consequently, an efficient, polynomial-time solution algorithm is introduced.