Scheduling in Computer and Manufacturing Systems

This book provides a theoretical and application oriented analysis of deterministic scheduling problems arising in computer and manufacturing environments. This means that there are always processors (machines) in a set of resources which have to be allocated among tasks (jobs). Some problem parameters (e.g. task arrival times) may be unknown in advance, and then no knowledge-based approach is presented, creating a general tool for solving a broad class of practical problems. Most important classical results are surveyed with particular attention paid to single-processor scheduling. Then more general models are studied, including resource-constrained scheduling, flexible flow shops, dynamic job shops, and special flexible manufacturing systems. For the convenience of less advanced readers, basic concepts from scheduling theory and related areas (e.g. computational complexity analysis) are also described. Polynomial and exponential-time optimization algorithms, as well as approximation and heuristic ones are presented and discussed in the context of particular problems. For the presentation of algorithms a Pascal-like notation is adapted and used in almost all cases.