1. A method for scheduling jobs from among a plurality of job classes for service by a resource of a work-producing system, comprising the steps of: defining a set of performance goals for said job classes; training a neural network for producing a delay cost value function, said delay cost value function implementing said set of performance goals as output from at least one input, wherein at least one input to said neural network represents a delay time with respect to a job waiting for service by said resource; assigning a respective job delay cost to each of a plurality of jobs waiting for service by said resource using said delay cost value function produced by said neural network: and selecting a next job for service by said resource based on said job delay cost.