《1995 Lower bounds for the job-shop scheduling problem on multi-purpose machines》.pdf

DISCRETE APPLIED MATHEMATKS Discrete Applied Mathematics 58 (1995) 145-156 Lower bounds for the job-shop scheduling problem on multi-purpose machines* Bernd Jurisch* Universitiit Osnabriick, Osnabriick, Germany Received 10 January 1992;revised 27 July 1992 Abstract The job-shop problem on multi-purpose machines (MPM job-shop problem) arises in the area of flexible manufacturing systems. It is a generalization of the classical job-shop scheduling problem. We develop a lower bound for the MPM job-shop problem. It is based on a two-job relaxation which can be solved efficiently by using geometric methods. Keywords: Job-shop scheduling; Multi-purpose machines; Lower bound; Shortest path prob- lem with obstacles 1. Introduction Consider the following generalization of the job-shop scheduling problem. There are n jobs J1,..., J, and m different, so called multi-purpose machines M 1, . .. ,M,. Each job Ji consists of a number of ni operations Oil, .. . , Oini which have to be processed in this order. Associated with each operation Oij there is a set M,} of machines. 0, has to be processed on exactly one machine in Mij E {Ml, .a. 7 Aij during pij time units without preemption. No machine can