Scheduling Tasks with Due Dates in a Fabrication/Assembly Process

In fabrication and assembly processes, end-product due dates play a significant role in scheduling tasks to minimize earliness and lateness penalties. We develop a heuristic technique for this problem that solves a sequence of maximum flow problems to identify improved schedules. This method compares favorably with finite loading, another scheduling heuristic. Our computational results include the solution of a problem involving 26,100 tasks scheduled on 52 work centers.