Discrete Dynamics in Nature and Society Scheduling Problems with Due Date Assignment Guest Editors: Yunqiang Yin, Shuenn-Ren Cheng, John Y. Chiang, Jason C. H. Chen, Xuerong Mao, and Chin-Chia Wu Scheduling Problems with Due Date Assignment Discrete Dynamics in Nature and Society Scheduling Problems with Due Date Assignment Guest Editors: Yunqiang Yin, Shuenn-Ren Cheng, John Y. Chiang, Jason C. H. Chen, Xuerong Mao, and Chin-Chia Wu Copyright © 2015 Hindawi Publishing Corporation. All rights reserved. This is a special issue published in “Discrete Dynamics in Nature and Society.” All articles are open access articles distributed underthe Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Editorial Board Pedro Albertos, Spain Abderrahman Iggidr, France Mustapha A. Rami, Spain Douglas R. Anderson, USA Giuseppe Izzo, Italy Aura Reggiani, Italy Ivan Area, Spain Sarangapani Jagannathan, USA Pavel Rehak, Czech Republic David Arroyo, Spain Jun Ji, USA Paolo Renna, Italy Viktor Avrutin, Germany Jorge J. Julvez,´ Spain Marko Robnik, Slovenia Stefan Balint, Romania Govindan Kannan, Denmark Yuriy Rogovchenko, Norway Kamel Barkaoui, France Nikos I. Karachalios, Greece Silvia Romanelli, Italy Kenneth S. Berenhaut, USA Eric R. Kaufmann, USA Ventsi G. Rumchev, Australia Abraham Berman, Israel Candace M. Kent, USA Josep Sardanyes, Spain Gian I. Bischi, Italy Ryusuke Kon, Japan Leonid Shaikhet, Ukraine Jean-Louis Boimond, France Qingkai Kong, USA Peng Shi, Australia Gabriele Bonanno, Italy Victor S. Kozyakin, Russia Seenith Sivasundaram, USA Driss Boutat, France Mustafa Kulenovic,´ USA Charalampos Skokos, South Africa Gabriella Bretti, Italy Jurgen¨ Kurths, Germany Michael Sonis, Israel Filippo Cacace, Italy Kousuke Kuto, Japan Piergiulio Tempesta, Spain Pasquale Candito, Italy Aihua Li, USA Gerald Teschl, Austria Cengiz C¸inar,Turkey Ronghui Liu, UK Tetsuji Tokihiro, Japan Carmen Coll, Spain Xiaohui Liu, UK Juan R. Torregrosa, Spain Alicia Cordero, Spain Jean J. Loiseau, France DelfimF.M.Torres,Portugal Daniel Czamanski, Israel Miguel Angel´ Lopez,´ Spain Firdaus Udwadia, USA RichardH.Day,USA Ricardo Lopez-Ruiz,´ Spain Nguyen Van Minh, USA Manuel De la Sen, Spain Agustin Martin, Spain Antonia Vecchio, Italy Luisa Di Paola, Italy Akio Matsumoto, Japan Francisco R. Villatoro, Spain Josef Dibl´ık, Czech Republic Rigoberto Medina, Chile Hubertus Von Bremen, USA Xiaohua Ding, China Vicenc¸Mendez,´ Spain Bixiang Wang, USA Adam Doliwa, Poland Eleonora Messina, Italy Abdul-Aziz Yakubu, USA Elmetwally Elabbasy, Egypt Ahmad Naimzada, Italy Bo Yang, USA Hassan A. El-Morshedy, Egypt G. Papashinopoulos, Greece Necmettin Yildirim, USA Jacques Ferland, Canada Juan Pavon,´ Spain Binggen Zhang, China Daniele Fournier-Prunaret, France Allan C. Peterson, USA Guang Zhang, China CiprianG.Gal,USA Carlo Piccardi, Italy Zhengqiu Zhang, China Gisele` R. Goldstein, USA Giuseppe Piccardo, Italy Lu Zhen, China Vladimir Gontar, Israel Andrew Pickering, Spain Zhan Zhou, China Chris Goodrich, USA Peter Plath, Germany Yong Zhou, China Pilar R. Gordoa, Spain Chuanxi Qian, USA Zuo-nong Zhu, China Luca Guerrini, Italy Irena Rachunkov˚ a,´ Czech Republic Lawrence P.Horwitz, Israel Morteza Rafei, Netherlands Contents Scheduling Problems with Due Date Assignment, Yunqiang Yin, Shuenn-Ren Cheng, John Y. Chiang, JasonC.H.Chen,XuerongMao,andChin-ChiaWu Volume 2015, Article ID 683269, 2 pages Two-Agent Scheduling to Minimize the Maximum Cost with Position-Dependent Jobs,LongWan Volume 2015, Article ID 932680, 4 pages Recognition and Empirical Research on Key Influencing Factors of Low Carbon Development for Logistics Company, Xiang-Yun Duan, Hsiu-Jung Chou, and Shuenn-Ren Cheng Volume 2015, Article ID 851492, 9 pages A Single-Machine Two-Agent Scheduling Problem by a Branch-and-Bound and Three Simulated Annealing Algorithms, Shangchia Liu, Wen-Hsiang Wu, Chao-Chung Kang, Win-Chin Lin, and Zhenmin Cheng Volume 2015, Article ID 681854, 8 pages Integrated Optimization of Service-Oriented Train Plan and Schedule on Intercity Rail Network with Varying Demand, Wenliang Zhou, Junli Tian, Lianbo Deng, and Jin Qin Volume 2015, Article ID 419042, 9 pages A Column Generation Based Hyper-Heuristic to the Bus Driver Scheduling Problem,HongLi, Ying Wang, Shi Li, and Sujian Li Volume 2015, Article ID 638104, 10 pages A Cellular Automata Traffic Flow Model considering Bus Lane Changing Behavior with Scheduling Parameters, Zun-dong Zhang, Yan-fang Yang, Wenjiao Qi, Abderrahim Chariete, and Xing-xiang Lin Volume 2015, Article ID 348582, 7 pages Bounded Fatou Components of Composite Transcendental Entire Functions with Gaps,CunjiYangand Shaoming Wang Volume 2015, Article ID 149182, 6 pages Online Scheduling on a Single Machine with Grouped Processing Times,QijiaLiu,LongWan, and Lijun Wei Volume 2015, Article ID 805294, 7 pages A Note on Two-Agent Scheduling with Resource Dependent Release Times on a Single Machine, Peng Liu and Lini Duan Volume 2015, Article ID 503297, 4 pages A Hybrid Heuristic Algorithm for Ship Block Construction Space Scheduling Problem,ShichengHu, Tengjiao Liu, Song Wang, Yonggui Kao, and Xuedong Sun Volume 2015, Article ID 841637, 6 pages Scheduling and Common Due Date Assignment on a Single Parallel-Batching Machine with Batch Delivery, Hua Gong, Biao Zhang, and Wuliang Peng Volume 2015, Article ID 464390, 7 pages A Unified Weight Formula for Calculating the Sample Variance from Weighted Successive Differences, Kuo-Hung Lo, Tien-Lung Sun, and Juei-Chao Chen Volume 2014, Article ID 210761, 4 pages Multiple-Decision Procedures for Testing the Homogeneity of Mean for Exponential Distributions, Han-Ching Chen, Her Pei Shan, and Nae-Sheng Wang Volume 2014, Article ID 701074, 5 pages Hindawi Publishing Corporation Discrete Dynamics in Nature and Society Volume 2015, Article ID 683269, 2 pages http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2015/683269 Editorial Scheduling Problems with Due Date Assignment Yunqiang Yin,1 Shuenn-Ren Cheng,2 John Y. Chiang,3 JasonC.H.Chen,4 Xuerong Mao,5 and Chin-Chia Wu6 1 Faculty of Management and Economics, Kunming University of Science and Technology, Kunming 650093, China 2Graduate Institute of Business Administration, Cheng Shiu University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan 3Department of Computer Science & Engineering, National Sun Yat-Sen University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan 4School of Business, Gonzaga University, E 502 Boone Avenue, Spokane, WA 99258, USA 5Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Strathclyde, UK 6Department of Statistics, Feng Chia University, Taichung, Taiwan Correspondence should be addressed to Yunqiang Yin; [email protected] Received 18 March 2015; Accepted 18 March 2015 Copyright © 2015 Yunqiang Yin et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Schedulingproblemswithduedateassignmenthaveattracted dependent release times and two agents. Their objective is much research attention in the past few decades due to the to find a schedule for the problem of minimizing A-agent’s introduction of new concepts and practices of operations total amount of resource consumption with a constraint on B- management. Meanwhile, there are a lot of works by building agent’s makespan. They propose a polynomial time algorithm upadiscretemathematicalapproachrestrictedbytheabsence to solve the problem. S. Liu et al. consider a two-agent of general principles that could play the same role as the scheduling on a single machine to minimize the A-agent’s vibrational principles in operation research or application total completion time with the restriction that has an upper statistics. The issue on scheduling problems with due date bound on B-agent’s total completion time. They use a branch- assignment inspires many researchers to address many inter- and-bound and three simulated annealing algorithms to esting manuscripts most of which are discussed widely over solve the proposed problem. Five manuscripts focus on new single-machine, flowshop, or parallel settings. developments in scheduling approach in operation research. One manuscript addresses the topic on common due date Q. Liu et al. consider the online scheduling problem on a assignment over a parallel-batching machine. H. Gong et singlemachinewiththeassumptionthatalljobshavetheir al. consider the parallel-batching scheduling problem with processing times in specified interval and all the jobs should delivery involving both batching scheduling and common be first processed on a single machine and then delivered due date assignment. They prove that the problem is NP- by a vehicle to some customer. Public transit providers are hard in the strong sense and build dynamic programming often facing continuous pressure to improve service quality algorithms for two special cases with a given sequence and reduce operating costs. Inspired by this observation, H. of orders on the machine and a given batching in the Li et al. address a bus driver scheduling problem. Sometime production part, respectively. Three manuscripts concentrate real-life large and complex problem instances often need on two-agent scheduling on single-machine setting. L. Wan new approaches to overcome the computational difficulties investigates a two-agent scheduling problem on a single in solving them, and thus they propose a column generation machine to minimize the maximum