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Scheduling reentrant jobs on parallel machines with a remote server
This paper explores a specific combinatorial problem relating to re-entrant jobs on parallel primary machines, with a remote server machine. A middle operation is required by each job on the server before it returns to its primary processing machine. The problem is inspired by the logistics of a semi-automated micro-biology laboratory. The testing programme in the laboratory corresponds roughly to a hybrid flowshop, whose bottleneck stage is the subject of study. We demonstrate the NP-hard nature of the problem, and provide various structural features. A heuristic is developed and tested on randomly generated benchmark data. Results indicate solutions reliably within 1.5% of optimum. We also provide a greedy 2-approximation algorithm. Test on real-life data from the microbiology laboratory indicate a 20% saving relative to current practice, which is more than can be achieved currently with 3 instead of 2 people staffing the primary machines
A survey of scheduling problems with setup times or costs
Author name used in this publication: C. T. NgAuthor name used in this publication: T. C. E. Cheng2007-2008 > Academic research: refereed > Publication in refereed journalAccepted ManuscriptPublishe
Scheduling on parallel machines with a common server in charge of loading and unloading operations
This paper addresses the scheduling problem on two identical parallel
machines with a single server in charge of loading and unloading operations of
jobs. Each job has to be loaded by the server before being processed on one of
the two machines and unloaded by the same server after its processing. No delay
is allowed between loading and processing, and between processing and
unloading. The objective function involves the minimization of the makespan.
This problem referred to as P2, S1|sj , tj |Cmax generalizes the classical
parallel machine scheduling problem with a single server which performs only
the loading (i.e., setup) operation of each job. For this NP-hard problem, no
solution algorithm was proposed in the literature. Therefore, we present two
mixedinteger linear programming (MILP) formulations, one with completion-time
variables along with two valid inequalities and one with time-indexed
variables. In addition, we propose some polynomial-time solvable cases and a
tight theoretical lower bound. In addition, we show that the minimization of
the makespan is equivalent to the minimization of the total idle times on the
machines. To solve large-sized instances of the problem, an efficient General
Variable Neighborhood Search (GVNS) metaheuristic with two mechanisms for
finding an initial solution is designed. The GVNS is evaluated by comparing its
performance with the results provided by the MILPs and another metaheuristic.
The results show that the average percentage deviation from the theoretical
lower-bound of GVNS is within 0.642%. Some managerial insights are presented
and our results are compared with the related literature.Comment: 40 pages, 4 figures, 16 table
Unified Concept of Bottleneck
The term `bottleneck` has been extensively used in operations management literature. Management paradigms like the Theory of Constraints focus on the identification and exploitation of bottlenecks. Yet, we show that the term has not been rigorously defined. We provide a classification of bottleneck definitions available in literature and discuss several myths associated with the concept of bottleneck. The apparent diversity of definitions raises the question whether it is possible to have a single bottleneck definition which has as much applicability in high variety job shops as in mass production environments. The key to the formulation of an unified concept of bottleneck lies in relating the concept of bottleneck to the concept of shadow price of resources. We propose an universally applicable bottleneck definition based on the concept of average shadow price. We discuss the procedure for determination of bottleneck values for diverse production environments. The Law of Diminishing Returns is shown to be a sufficient but not necessary condition for the equivalence of the average and the marginal shadow price. The equivalence of these two prices is proved for several environments. Bottleneck identification is the first step in resource acquisition decisions faced by managers. The definition of bottleneck presented in the paper has the potential to not only reduce ambiguity regarding the meaning of the term but also open a new window to the formulation and analysis of a rich set of problems faced by managers.
Cost-aware scheduling of deadline-constrained task workflows in public cloud environments
Public cloud computing infrastructure offers resources on-demand, and makes it possible to develop applications that elastically scale when demand changes. This capacity can be used to schedule highly parallellizable task workflows, where individual tasks consist of many small steps. By dynamically scaling the number of virtual machines used, based on varying resource requirements of different steps, lower costs can be achieved, and workflows that would previously have been infeasible can be executed. In this paper, we describe how task workflows consisting of large numbers of distributable steps can be provisioned on public cloud infrastructure in a cost-efficient way, taking into account workflow deadlines. We formally define the problem, and describe an ILP-based algorithm and two heuristic algorithms to solve it. We simulate how the three algorithms perform when scheduling these task workflows on public cloud infrastructure, using the various instance types of the Amazon EC2 cloud, and we evaluate the achieved cost and execution speed of the three algorithms using two different task workflows based on a document processing application
Design and Implementation of a Distributed Middleware for Parallel Execution of Legacy Enterprise Applications
A typical enterprise uses a local area network of computers to perform its
business. During the off-working hours, the computational capacities of these
networked computers are underused or unused. In order to utilize this
computational capacity an application has to be recoded to exploit concurrency
inherent in a computation which is clearly not possible for legacy applications
without any source code. This thesis presents the design an implementation of a
distributed middleware which can automatically execute a legacy application on
multiple networked computers by parallelizing it. This middleware runs multiple
copies of the binary executable code in parallel on different hosts in the
network. It wraps up the binary executable code of the legacy application in
order to capture the kernel level data access system calls and perform them
distributively over multiple computers in a safe and conflict free manner. The
middleware also incorporates a dynamic scheduling technique to execute the
target application in minimum time by scavenging the available CPU cycles of
the hosts in the network. This dynamic scheduling also supports the CPU
availability of the hosts to change over time and properly reschedule the
replicas performing the computation to minimize the execution time. A prototype
implementation of this middleware has been developed as a proof of concept of
the design. This implementation has been evaluated with a few typical case
studies and the test results confirm that the middleware works as expected
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