MIP formulations and heuristics for solving parallel batching problems

This paper addresses the scheduling problem involving batch processing machines, which is also known as parallel batching in the literature. The presented mixed integer programming formulation first provides an elegant model for the problem under study. Furthermore, it enables solutions to the problem instances beyond the capability of exact methods developed so far. In order to alleviate computational burden, the authors propose MIP-based heuristic approaches which balance solution quality and computing time.