Scheduling multiple orders per job in a single machine to minimize total completion time

This paper deals with a single-machine scheduling problem with multiple orders per job (MOJ) considerations. Both lot processing machines and item processing machines are also examined. There are two primary decisions that must be made in the proposed problem: (1) how to group the orders together, and (2) how to schedule the jobs once they are formed. In order to obtain the optimal solution to a scheduling problem, these two decisions should be made simultaneously. The performance measure is the total completion time of all orders. Two mixed binary integer programming models are developed to optimally solve this problem. Also, two efficient heuristics are proposed for solving large-sized problems. Computational results are provided to demonstrate the efficiency of the models and the effectiveness of the heuristics.