A heuristic to minimize a quadratic function of job lateness on a single machine

This study considers the problem of minimizing a quadratic function of job lateness on a single machine. The effective decision index obtained by a rearrangement of the objective function is derived and exploited to develop and O(N³) heuristic algorithm. The algorithm overcomes the drawbacks that existed in the algorithms of Gupta and Sen. The computational results indicate that the heuristic algorithm not only is efficient but also consistently provides very satisfactory results.