Priority scheduling with cost considerations

Abstract

Although many articles have been published on the general priority scheduling problem, very few have been concerned with directly minimizing costs. The few studies which do consider overall costs do not use these costs in establishing a job's priority in the queue. This paper investigates how the time and cost performance of jobs are affected by the use of a rule which directly considers costs. A simulation model of a hypothetical job shop is used to examine several of these cost rules, as well as some common rules concerned with the timeliness of jobs. Performance measures include both time-oriented and cost-oriented measures. The results indicate that rules which directly consider costs (or profit) may prove practical for a manager where minimization of WTP and maximization of ROT are the primary and secondary objectives of the company