A survey of the state-of-the-art of common due date assignment and scheduling research

We aim at providing a unified framework of the common due date assignment and scheduling problems in the deterministic case by surveying the literature concerning the models involving single machine and parallel machines. The problems with due date determination have received considerable attention in the last 15 years due to the introduction of new methods of inventory management such as just-in-time (JIT) concepts. The common due date model corresponds, for instance, to an assembly system in which the components of the product should be ready at the same time, or to a shop where several jobs constitute a single customer's order. In the problems under consideration, the objective is to find an optimal value of the common due date and the related optimal schedule in order to optimize a given criterion based on the due date and the completion times of jobs. The results on the algorithms and complexity of the common due date assignment and scheduling problems are summarized.