Priority Rules for Multi‐Task Due‐Date Scheduling under Varying Processing Costs
研究了处理成本变化时多任务调度的优先级规则，证明最短松弛时间与最长剩余处理时间原则的最优性，并提出了成本平衡启发式策略，对建筑和自由咨询等行业的管理者有参考价值。
We study the scheduling of multiple tasks under varying processing costs and derive a priority rule for optimal scheduling policies. Each task has a due date, and a non‐completion penalty cost is incurred if the task is not completely processed before its due date. We assume that the task arrival process is stochastic and the processing rate is capacitated. Our work is motivated by both traditional and emerging application domains, such as construction industry and freelance consulting industry. We establish the optimality of Shorter Slack time and Longer remaining Processing time (SSLP) principle that determines the priority among active tasks. Based on the derived structural properties, we also propose an effective cost‐balancing heuristic policy and demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed policy through extensive numerical experiments. We believe our results provide operators/managers valuable insights on how to devise effective service scheduling policies under varying costs.