Minimizing total completion time on a batch processing machine with job families

The authors consider the problem of minimizing the total completion time on a single batch processing machine. The set of jobs to be scheduled can be partitioned into a number of families, where all jobs in the same family have the same processing time. The machine can process at most B jobs simultaneously as a batch, and the processing time of a batch is equal to the processing time of the longest job in the batch. The authors analyze that properties of an optimal schedule and develop a dynamic programming algorithm of polynomial time complexity when the number of job families is fixed. The research is motivated by the problem of scheduling burn-in ovens in the semiconductor industry.