Earliness–tardiness job scheduling problem with a common due window on non-uniform machines

A mathematical model for the earliness–tardiness job scheduling problem with a common due window on non-uniform machines is put forward. Because the job scheduling problem contains a problem of minimum makespan, which is NP-complete on uniform machines, a heuristic algorithm is presented to find an approximate solution for the scheduling problem after proving an important theorem. Two numerical examples illustrate that the heuristic algorithm is very effective in obtaining near optimal solutions.