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Single-machine multitasking scheduling with job efficiency promotion

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Abstract

Motivated by behavioural and psychological phenomena that occur in human operators, we study single-machine multitasking scheduling with job efficiency promotion. In traditional multitasking scheduling, the primary task is assumed to be interrupted by every waiting task. In this paper we take into account job efficiency promotion that helps reduce the actual interruption time. We propose two functions to model job efficiency promotion based on the job positions in a given schedule. The objective is to minimize the makespan, total completion time, and total absolute difference in completion times. We show that the problem is polynomially solvable for each objective. We also provide efficient solutions for some special cases.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant Number 11971434 and 11871327, Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China under grant number LY21G010002, and the Contemporary Business and Trade Research Center of Zhejiang Gongshang University, which is a key Research Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities of the Ministry of Education of China. Cheng was supported in part by The Hong Kong Polytechnic University under the Fung Yiu King—Wing Hang Bank Endowed Professorship in Business Administration.

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Ji, M., Zhang, Y., Zhang, Y. et al. Single-machine multitasking scheduling with job efficiency promotion. J Comb Optim 44, 446–479 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10878-021-00822-1

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