Scheduling on a single machine with family setups to minimize total tardiness

This paper considers the problem of scheduling on a single machine to minimize total tardiness when family setup times exist. The paper proposes optimal branch-and-bound procedures for the case where the group technology assumption is used and for the case when the group technology assumption is removed. A heuristic procedure is also proposed to solve larger problems with the group technology assumption removed. The procedures were tested on problems of various sizes and parameters. An important finding of the tests is total tardiness can be significantly reduced by removing the group technology assumption when scheduling. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.