Minimizing due date related performance measures on two batch processing machines

This paper considers a scheduling problem in a two-machine flowshop of two batch processing machines. On each batch processing machine, jobs are processed in a batch, and each batch is allowed to contain jobs up to the maximum capacity of the associated machine. The scheduling problem is analyzed with respect to three due date related objectives including maximum tardiness, number of tardy jobs and total tardiness. In the analysis, several solution properties are characterized and based upon these properties, three efficient polynomial time algorithms are developed for minimizing the due date related measures.