AbstractWe present a framework for managing vital customer priorities in job‐shop manufacturing environments. We introduce the notion of attaining near‐perfect on‐time delivery service to a small portion of the firm's customers who contribute to a substantial portion of its sales revenue and profits. Consequently we postulate that appropriate order review and release (ORR) policies, along with the dispatching rules used to schedule customer orders, can be combined effectively to achieve the desired customer service results. Several dispatching rules specifically designed for this study are tested under different operating environments in order to derive the recommended set of ORR and dispatching rule policies. Capacity‐based ORR procedures, in conjunction with dispatching rules that pace a job's progress through different operations in its route, provide the best overall performance. The nature of trade‐offs inherent in managing the priorities of vitally important customers are also identified and presented in the form of managerial recommendations that can be used to enhance a job shop's overall pe