Abstract
We consider scheduling a batch of jobs with stochastic processing times on parallel machines. We derive various new formulae for the expected flowtime and weighted flowtime under general scheduling rules. Smith's Rule, which orders job starts by decreasing ratio of weight to expected processing time provides a natural heuristic for this problem. We obtain a bound on the worst case difference between the expected weighted flow time under Smith's Rule and under an optimal policy. For a wide class of processing time distributions, this bound is of oder O(1) and does not increase with the number of jobs.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 195-242 |
Number of pages | 48 |
Journal | Annals of Operations Research |
Volume | 26 |
Issue number | 1 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Dec 1990 |
Externally published | Yes |
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Decision Sciences (all)
- Management Science and Operations Research