The coordination of scheduling and batch deliveries

This paper considers several scheduling problems where deliveries are made in batches with each batch delivered to the customer in a single shipment. Various scheduling costs, which are based on the delivery times of the jobs, are considered. The objective is to minimize the scheduling cost plus the delivery cost, and both single and parallel machine environments are considered. For many combinations of these, we either provide efficient algorithms that minimize total cost or show that the problem is intractable. Our work has implications for the coordination of scheduling with batch delivery decisions to improve customer service.