Integer Programming Models and Metaheuristics for Customer Order Scheduling

The problem of scheduling customer orders in a production unit is investigated. The order of a customer consists of several products. When the unit is switched from one product to another a setup operation arises. We consider two criteria: the total completion time and the weighted number of orders completed by their due dates. We provide and compare several approaches to construct integer linear programming models of the problem. A memetic algorithm with optimized operators is proposed for searching near optimal solutions. The results of the experimental evaluation are analysed on a series of instances and compared with state-of-the-art metaheuristics.