Operations Research Transactions ›› 2013, Vol. 17 ›› Issue (1): 38-43.

• Original Articles • Previous Articles     Next Articles

An improved algorithm for scheduling two identical machines with batch delivery consideration

 WANG Leiyang1, LIU Zhaohui1   

  1. 1. Department of Mathematics, East China University of Science and Technology
  • Online:2013-03-15 Published:2013-03-15

Abstract:  In this paper we consider the  scheduling problem on two identical (parallel) machines in which the finished jobs need to be delivered to a customer in batches by single vehicle.  The goal is to minimize the makespan, i.e., the time by which the vehicle has delivered the last job and returned to the machines. We assume that the jobs have different sizes, and give an approximation algorithm with the worst-case performance ratio(14/9+ε).

Key words: scheduling, batch delivery, approximation algorithm