The supplying chain scheduling with the cost constraint and subcontracting (Q471714)

Summary: We propose an analytical scheduling model with subcontracting. Each job can be processed either on a single machine at a manufacturer or outsourced to a subcontractor, possibly at a higher cost. For a given set of jobs, the decisions the manufacturer needs to make include the selection of a subset of jobs to be outsourced and the schedule of all the jobs. The objective functions are to minimize the commonly used scheduling measures, subject to a constraint on the total production and subcontracting cost. We show the NP-hardiness for the problems with different objective functions and develop dynamic programming algorithms for solving them.