Scheduling with inserted idle time: Problem taxonomy and literature review

In the context of production scheduling, inserted idle time (IIT) occurs wh enever a resource is deliberately kept idle in the face of waiting jobs. II T schedules are particularly relevant in multimachine industrial situations where earliness costs and/or dynamically arriving jobs with due dates come into play. We provide a taxonomy of environments in which IIT scheduling i s relevant, review the errant literature on IIT scheduling, and identify ar eas of opportunity for future research.