NOTE ON MINIMIZING THE AVERAGE DEVIATION OF JOB COMPLETION TIMES ABOUT A COMMON DUE-DATE.

This paper treats the problem of sequencing n jobs on a single machine with penalties occurring when a job is completed early or late. The objective is to minimize the total penalty. The penalty function has the same form as that assumed in a previous paper by J. J. Kanet, but the restrictive assumption on the due-dates is relaxed. The result is that the quoted common due-date is reduced, while the efficient algorithm proposed by Kanet can still be used to help determine the optimal job sequence.