Scheduling problems with due date assignment have attracted much research attention in the past few decades due to the introduction of new concepts and practices of operations management such as just-in-time production and supply chain management. In this type of problems, the due date itself is a decision variable, in contrast to classical scheduling in which due dates are exogenously given. The study of due date assignment is motivated by real-life situations in which due dates are determined in negotiation with customers. In order to avoid earliness-tardiness penalties, including the possibility of losing customers, companies are under increasing pressure to quote attainable due dates. At the same time, promising due dates too far into the future may not be acceptable to customers or may force the company to offer price discounts in order to keep the customers. This is a difficult task and there is clearly an inherent tradeoff between quoting short due dates and due dates that can be easily met. Due to their theoretical challenges and practical values, scheduling with due date assignment has attracted a considerable amount of research attention in the literature. Further developments in such a discrete mathematical approach are restricted by the absence of general principles that could play the same role as the vibrational principles in operation research or application statistics.

This special issue is devoted to publishing original and significant results on scheduling problems with due date assignment. This special issue will cover a wide range of topics covering new theory development, innovative modelling and analysis, fundamental methodological breakthroughs, and novel applications. Papers can be theoretical, methodological, computational, or application-oriented.

Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• Scheduling with due date assignment and learning effects
• Scheduling with due date assignment and ageing effects
• Scheduling with due date assignment and two agents
• Scheduling with due date assignment and resource consumptions
• New models for scheduling with due date assignment
• New methods for dealing with scheduling with due date assignment