《Job Scheduling 》.pdfVIP

14 Job Scheduling 14.1 Problem Formulation Job scheduling or operation scheduling is a typical problem frequently appearing within DEDS. The core of the problem consists in how to achieve an optimal distribution of jobs or operations among the processing units or servers available in the system under various criteria. In other words, the problem is the optimal allocation of the system resources (Frankovič and Budinská 1998). Typical environments in which a scheduling problem occurs are flexible manufacturing systems, distributed computer systems, database systems, and other. For example, flexible manufacturing systems (FMS) usually consist of product processing or machining units, measuring and testing equipments, transportation facilities, manipulators and robots, intermediate storages, input and output devices. Various methods have been developed for scheduling problems (Engell 1989; Li et al., 1995; Zhou and Venkatesh, 1998). It has been discussed earlier in this book that process control means control of the basic processes at the level responsible for direct control. It is the control level or layer closest to the system processes. A hierarchically higher level is the co- ordination level of the basic processes. Here, the co-ordination is considered as a selection of servers performing basic processing, if there are more options. For example, in flexible manufacturing systems it is a selection of production units if there are more options to realize a prescribed technological recipe. One of co- ordination aims is to accomplish the required jobs in the minimum time span. For this aim it is necessary to know the duration times of the scheduled operations. Other scheduling optimization criteria can be, e.g., the maximum