A heuristic for the job scheduling problem with a common due window on parallel and non-identical machines

In this paper, we give a mathematical model for earliness-tardiness job scheduling problem with a common due window on parallel and non-identical machines. Because the job scheduling problem discussed in the paper contains a problem of minimizing make-span, which is NP-complete on parallel and 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 useful and effective in obtaining the near-optimal solution.