Scheduling about a large common due date with tolerance to minimize mean absolute deviation of completion times

In this article the problem of minimizing the mean absolute deviation (MAD) of job completion times about an unrestricted given common due date with tolerance in the n‐job, single‐machine scheduling environment is considered. We describe some optimality conditions and show that the unrestricted version of the MAD problem with an arbitrary due date tolerance is polynomial by proposing a polynomial‐time algorithm for identifying an optimal schedule. © 1994 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.