Scheduling with Centralized and Decentralized Batching Policies in Concurrent Open Shops

Abstract

This article considers batch scheduling with centralized and decentralized decisions. The context of our study is concurrent open shop scheduling where the jobs are to be processed on a set of independent dedicated machines, which process designated operations of the jobs in batches. The hatching policy across the machines can be centralized or decentralized. We study such scheduling problems with the objectives of minimizing the maximum lateness, weighted number of tardy jobs, and total weighted completion time, when the job sequence is determined in advance. We present polynomial time dynamic programming algorithms for some cases of these problems and pseudo-polynomial time algorithms for some problems that are NP-hard in the ordinary sense. (C) 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 58: 17-27, 2011