Due date assignments and scheduling a single machine with a general earliness/tardiness cost function

We study three different due date assignment problems in scheduling a single machine which differ from each other based upon the objective function and due date assignment method being used. Two different objective functions are considered. The first is a cost function that includes earliness, tardiness and due date assignment penalties and the second is a function that includes penalties due to the number of tardy jobs and due date assignments. We assume that the earliness, tardiness and due date assignment penalties are continuous and non-decreasing functions of the corresponding duration. The goal is to minimize each objective function for two different due date assignment methods. The first is a method in which the assigned due dates are restricted to be equal while the second is a method that allows us to assign different due dates to different jobs.