Scheduling in a sequence dependent setup environment with genetic search

Work on scheduling in the presence of squence dependent setup times has generally focused on minimizing the total setup time (or cost) or minimizing the makespan of a set of jobs. We explore the problem of sequencing to minimize the total tardiness of a set of jobs in a single-stage process where setup times are sequence dependent. In particular, we examine the efficacy of using genetic search to develop near optimal schedules in this environment.